Panettone
Panettone is among the hardest things to bake at home, and its difficulty has one name: the dough carries about 40% fat relative to flour. That much butter and yolk slows the yeast and obstructs gluten formation, which is why the whole thing takes two days and why the butter goes in only once the gluten network is fully built. The reward is a crumb that pulls apart in strands instead of crumbling.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Preferment 720 min
- Final dough 40 min
- Bulk rise 300 min
- Shaping 20 min
- Proving 300 min
- Baking 55 min
- Cooling upside down 240 min
Step by step
0 / 9 doneStart the preferment overnight
Mix the flour, water, a pinch of yeast and honey and leave for 12 hours at room temperature. It should double or triple in volume, be full of bubbles and smell mildly tangy. The tiny amount of yeast is deliberate — with more, the preferment overferments and collapses long before morning. This stage gives aroma and strength that a fast rise alone cannot.
Ingredients: 150 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 90 ml water · 1 g dried yeast · 1 tsp honey
Mix the dough without butter for 15 minutes
Combine the preferment with the flour, yeast, yolks, sugar, milk, vanilla and orange zest and mix with a dough hook for 15 minutes. Add the salt after five. The dough should clear the sides of the bowl and wrap around the hook — only then move on.
Ingredients: 350 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 5 g dried yeast · 6 pcs egg yolks · 130 g sugar · 200 g butter · 15 g butter for the top · 60 ml milk · 8 g salt · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 1 pcs orange
Add the butter a piece at a time over 20 minutes
Add the soft butter a spoonful at a time, waiting each time for it to be fully absorbed. It takes 20 minutes and cannot be hurried: fat added all at once coats the flour and gluten stops forming. The dough will look split along the way — it comes back. If the long mixing makes it noticeably warm (above about 26°C), chill the bowl for 10 minutes before carrying on.
Ingredients: 350 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 5 g dried yeast · 6 pcs egg yolks · 130 g sugar · 200 g butter · 15 g butter for the top · 60 ml milk · 8 g salt · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 1 pcs orange
Spoon by spoon — every one must be absorbed.Check the windowpane
Tear off a piece of dough and stretch it between your fingers. It should form a translucent membrane you can see light through, without tearing. If it tears, mix another 3 minutes and test again. Without this the panettone cannot hold its own height.
Ingredients: 350 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 5 g dried yeast · 6 pcs egg yolks · 130 g sugar · 200 g butter · 15 g butter for the top · 60 ml milk · 8 g salt · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 1 pcs orange
A translucent membrane with no tears — now the fruit.Add the fruit briefly and leave to rise
Mix in the drained raisins and peel on the lowest speed for one minute — longer cuts through the gluten network. Cover and leave at 24–26°C until clearly doubled in volume — usually 4–6 hours, about five on average.
Ingredients: 200 g raisins · 150 g candied peel
Shape a ball and fill the case a third
Shape a taut ball and set it in a 1.5 kg paper panettone case (about 20 cm across), or divide it between two 750 g cases, filling them roughly a third of their height. It looks like far too little dough, and that is the point — panettone roughly triples during proving and baking.
Ingredients: 150 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 90 ml water · 1 g dried yeast · 1 tsp honey
A third of the case — the rest is room to climb.Prove five hours to the rim
Leave for about 5 hours (4–6), until the dough reaches the rim of the case. Do not cut this short: an under-proved panettone lacks the gas to lift a crumb this heavy with butter and bakes dense. Cut a cross in the top and set the butter for the top in it.
Ingredients: 350 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 5 g dried yeast · 6 pcs egg yolks · 130 g sugar · 200 g butter · 15 g butter for the top · 60 ml milk · 8 g salt · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 1 pcs orange
Bake about 50 minutes, to 94°C inside
Bake 10 minutes at 190°C, then about 40 minutes at 165°C. Cover with foil if the top darkens too fast. A thermometer is mandatory — 94°C in the centre; if it falls short, bake on in 5-minute bursts. Two smaller panettoni take about 35–40 minutes. A dough this rich gives no reliable external signs.
Ingredients: 350 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 5 g dried yeast · 6 pcs egg yolks · 130 g sugar · 200 g butter · 15 g butter for the top · 60 ml milk · 8 g salt · 1 pcs vanilla pod · 1 pcs orange
Hang it upside down for hours
As soon as it leaves the oven, pierce the loaf with two long skewers just above the base and hang it upside down between two pans for at least 4 hours, ideally overnight. A hot panettone is still too weak to carry its own weight — left upright it sinks in the middle.
Ingredients: 150 g high-protein flour (e.g. manitoba) · 90 ml water · 1 g dried yeast · 1 tsp honey
Hung upside down — otherwise it collapses.
Before you start
The flour matters more than usual
You need flour with at least 13% protein, ideally manitoba. Ordinary bread flour (around 11–12% protein) will not build a network able to carry 200 g of butter — a common cause of a collapsed panettone.
Spread it over two days
Evening of day one: preferment. Morning of day two: dough and bulk rise. Afternoon: shaping and proving. Evening: baking, then cooling overnight. Cut it on day three.
Keeping it
Tightly wrapped in film it stays moist for about a week — the result of all that fat and sugar. Do not refrigerate it: in the cold it goes stale much faster.
