Panettone

Panettone for me had up until today only been eaten from a box or mini ones at a coffee shop  I always buy one around Christmas time but never made one. Given my love of making bread it's a bit of a mystery why I hadn't but never mind. Yesterday I was looking through cupboards and wondering what I had that needed using up or that I had forgotten I had, which happens a fair bit. Dried sweetened cranberries jumped out as did a tub of mixed peel and plain and white chocolate. Decided to go with the white chocolate and looked up a gazillion panettone recipes and sort of hashed one together to work with what I have.

8g dried yeast

125ml of warm full fat milk

1 teaspoon orange blossom water (optional)

400g strong white bread flour

pinch of salt

2 medium eggs

80g caster sugar

2 egg yolks

60g dried sweetened cranberries

100g mixed cut peel

50 grams chopped white chocolate ( would double this next time)

extra butter for greasing moulds and brushing tops of bread

taking a tablespoon or so of the flour and reserving I mixed the yeast, flour, orange blossom water, milk, 2 eggs and pinch of salt into my bowl until it mixed into a slightly shaggy dough.  Was a bit dry but more egg yolks were to be added. sprinkle the dough with the reserved flour and leave for around 30-40 minutes.

Next you can do this by hand but I use my stand mixer add in the sugar and the egg yolks. mixing or kneading for 5 minutes or until you get a very soft pliable dough. Then mix in or knead in the softened butter  This takes a while and is very gungy slippery texture while incorporating it. Mine was a bit sticky and I added in a few tablespoons more of flour.  Then twigged if I was kneading it by hand it would be on floured board and absorb more anyway! 

Shape into a ball and oil bowl, cover with cling film ( I use a shower cap) and Leave for an hour to prove and double in size.

While It is doing this I buttered and lined base and sides of 3 300 ml ramekins with grease proof paper, Leaving a big collar out of the top.  Tins for this that were mentioned in recipes I read ranged from 12-15 cm tins, none of which I had so I improvised.

When the dough has doubled in size I tipped out onto a lightly floured board and gently folded and kneaded the fruits and chocolate through the dough.  Did wonder at first if there was to much for the dough but it isn't, just keep poking and folding escaped bits back into the dough. 

Divided the dough in 3 balls an placed into the lined ramekins. Covered with a tea towel and let rise for roughly another our until they rose again by double.

Preheat oven to gas mark 5

Next stage was to cut a cross in the top with a sharp knife and brush with melted cooled butter and place in oven for 10 minutes for these but 20 for big individual one.

After 10 minutes brush with butter again and reduce to gas mark 4 and put back in oven for another 20 minutes or 35 for big one. If they look like they are burning cover with a piece of foil just resting on top

And this is how much they rose! I left for 10 minutes still in ramekins and then removed onto cooling rack.  Where we waited until just warm and dived in

I decided it needs double the amount of chocolate I put in and bigger chunks, Plus the orange blossom water was rather not there so maybe will try grated orange zest next time. Great texture and taste.  But definitely a case of could be improved