I wanted to take advantage of the long winter break and make panettone. The traditional panettone is fairly involved--about a three-day process, that requires preparation of the levain (at least 12 hours, unless there's a very active starter on hand), from which the first dough is made. The first dough is then allowed to ferment for another 12 hours. More ingredients are added into the first dough to make the final dough, which will be baked into the finished product.
The "quick" version involves preparation of the sponge instead of the levain, which cuts down the time drastically to a one-day process. However, the resulting product isn't as flavorful and doesn't have the keeping quality of the natural starter version.
I tried my hand at the sponge method, and was quite successful in producing one of the fluffiest sweet breads I've ever made (I used a recipe from On Baking textbook). Encouraged by this, I tried the natural starter method...only to fail miserably. Even though I baked it for the length of time called for in the recipe, the bread turned out totally underbaked and doughy.
So I went back to using the sponge method. Except when I did it the second time, the dough failed to rise properly. After several hours, I decided to just bake the bread anyway. The result...
A stunted, dense bread, not at all like the one that I baked before. It still tasted good, so I gave it to our family friend, who thought it was one of the best sweet bread that she'd ever had.
Upon reflection, I realized that the water I used was probably too hot and ended up killing the yeast.
So I tried again. This time I remembered to use warm, not hot, water to dissolve the yeast in. Lo and behold...
See the difference?? The second loaf is twice the height of the first one. It tasted great! But it still wasn't as soft and fluffy as I had hoped.
So I tried using a different recipe, from the Advanced Baking&Pastry. The recipe called for a 10-minute fermentation and 30~40-minute resting time. I just let it ferment for an hour. After I punched it down, I divided it into two, and put them into a 6" coffee can. Panettone is traditionally baked in a tall, round pan. I let it proof until it looked almost over-proofed. Maybe that's why it turned out....
...SO tall! I think it was even taller than the On Baking recipe. Granted I baked this in our family friend's gas oven (ours is electric), so that may have made a difference.
And the bread turned out oh-so-soft and fluffy. Exactly like the way I wanted it! Maybe I'll try my hand at the natural starter method next time...
School starts this week--Chocolates and confections. Pretty excited!
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