This is a delicious and delicately flavored panettone. Not too sweet and with bright but naturally colored citrus, cranberry and nuts, it’s pretty and makes a great gift (but remember to save enough for yourself).
I used butter paper panettone molds and baked 4 loaves. It was easy to get together, although I was a bit concerned with my mixer and hand mixed and then kneaded the last part of the stiff dough. It’s a reminder of how nice it is to work with enriched batters as they develop (although this was my first panettone).
The result is worth using really good ingredients (I ordered fresh batches of candied lemons and oranges, made sure my dry cranberries were fresh, etc.). The entire recipe can be prepared in a day, and most of the time will be spent on leveling up. The Panettone turned out so well that I’m currently planning my next batch and experimenting with different sized shapes.
In the days that follow, the panettone seems to taste even better if it’s stored well wrapped. I wanted to hear the opinion of some people who knew panettone far better than I did and they found it delicious, perhaps a bit firmer than those their families had, but delicious both plain and buttered and toasted. If I do another one and the weather is very cold I will try to be even more patient to get the higher climb I was hoping for.
The only direction that made NO sense was adding rum and vanilla to all the dry ingredients. Towards the end of the blending, I felt like it was overloading the blender. In hindsight, it might have been better to switch to a dough hook, but I removed it and finished mixing by hand in a large, shallow bowl, then finished kneading on a large board.
The initial climb took a little over 2 hours. My kitchen is a bit chilly in cold weather and my rise wasn’t as dramatic in the end as I would have hoped after shaping and re-rising, but within the bounds of the recipe called for. After 80 minutes (cool kitchen again) they were well over 1 1/2 times the original size and not quite double.
I used 4 small panettone parchments, about 5 1/4 inches in diameter and 3 1/2 inches deep. Place on a large baking sheet and bake all 4 at once. There was definitely browning after 20 minutes, so I covered the rest with light foil. Given the wide aspect ratio of my molds, the baking time seemed closer to 40-45 minutes.