How to Make Panettone Part 1

Hi, welcome back to LeGourmet.tv. Today we’re going to make panettone, a really favorite around our household in the Christmas season. We’re going to start out with some lukewarm milk, and to that we’re going to add the yeast, and just give it a little bit of a stir, and you cut away from that defoam up just to make sure your yeast is good. You’re going to find with panettone, there’s dozens of recipes. Some of them are bread-like, like the one I’m going to make today. Some of them are cake-like, they don’t use yeast at all for lemoning. They use baking powder or baking soda. They’ll come to a basically the same end though. They’re Christmas bread. They’re very rich. They’re buttery. They’re filled with raisins and / or peel. Fantastic! So our yeast and milk mixture is ready to go. In the bowl, we’ve got three and a half cups of flour. We made a well in the middle. We’re going to [pour the milk in. I’ve got to whole eggs. We’re going to pour that in as well. And then we just give this a little bit of a stir to mix the egg into the milk and then slowly incorporate some of the flour from around the edge. So we mix this into a batter-like consistency and then slowly, just not a little bit of a flour over the top, so you’ve got dry flour on top of the batter. We’re going to leave it for half an hour to create a sponge. We’re going to get the spongy mixture in the middle and then we can move on to the next step. So the more draft free space for about a half an hour and we’ll come back to it. So half an hour has passed and we’ve developed this sponge. To this now we add sugar, two egg yolks and we mix this up. You’re going to mix this into a dough. And once the dough is developed, we’re going to put in the softened butter. So the softened butter is in there now. And it’s at this point where you stick your hands in, and you just got to get dirty. You want to make it into a good ball of dough that you can then turn out into the kneading. Now with all the butter in there, it’s going to be sticky and that’s ok. Ok, so a little bit of flour on the countertop. Make a ball of dough, and you want to knead this for about five minutes until it’s smooth and elastic. Now you can do this is your stand mixer on your countertop. Certainly makes quick work of it, but there’s something about feeling the dough, and kind of reading the dough and understanding when you’ve reached the point. Making bread is very tactile. And it’s really not that difficult to knead for five minutes.