How to make handmade panettone

The handmade panettone you can make!

Sweet Christmas par excellence in Milan (and surroundings), you can also prepare it at home. The indispensable ingredient? So much patience. But the result will give you many satisfactions and a unique taste

The panettone is eaten at Christmas, but the search for the perfect specimen to bring to the table begins at the end of October. With candied or without candied fruit? With walnuts or chocolate? Pineapple or ginger? There are so many versions to choose from, the only essential condition is that the panettone is handcrafted. So why not try to prepare it at home? The enterprise is not impossible, the only essential ingredient is patience. Yes, because the panettone needs a long period of leavening to assume the softness that distinguishes it.

And then the filling: you can customize it as you like, or, if you prefer, leave it smooth.
Traditional panettone recipe

Here is the recipe for two traditional 500 g panettoni.

Ingredients: 315 g flour 0.200 g butter, 165 g sugar, 200 g candied fruit, 110 g raisins soaked in water and Marsala, 30 g honey, 12 g fresh beer yeast, 5 yolks, vanilla, sourdough, salt, seed oil and 1 lemon.

Procedure: Weigh 250 g of flour and 100 g of sugar. Put 90 g of sourdough yeast and 100 g of water into the mixing bowl and dissolve. Add a little flour, a spoonful of sugar and brewer's yeast to the bowl. Start kneading. Add the first yolk, a tablespoon of sugar and mix again. Add flour, egg yolk and sugar until the finish line. Add 90 g of soft butter, divided into small pieces, and knead well because it absorbs everything. Now take a cylindrical container, tall enough, put it with the seed oil and pour it into the dough, which you will leave to rise up, until it triples its volume. Take the dough back again and put it in the mixer again. Weigh 65 g of sugar and 65 g of flour. Add to the mixture 30 g of water and 30 g of sugar taken from 65 g. Add a little flour and then, as for the first dough, add 4 yolks and the rest of sugar and flour. Add 3.5 g of salt with 4 egg yolk and finally honey. In the end, add 80 g of butter, little by little, stirring well so that it can be amalgamated. In a small pan, put 30 g of butter, wrinkled raisins, candied fruit, vanilla bean seeds and lemon peel. Add everything to the mixture, stir for one minute and then leave to stand for 30 minutes. Divide the dough in half, cover each cake and leave to stand for 40 minutes. Close them individually in a food bag, put them in the oven at 30° and leave them to rise until they do not double in volume. At this point remove them from the oven, free them from the bags and let them rest for another 30 minutes. Cut the surface of each panettone cross, put a bow of butter on each surface and bake in a static oven at 165° for about 40 minutes. In the last 10 minutes, raise the oven to 175°. Remove the panettoni from the oven, infiltrate the base with two spit sticks and let them cool overturned for one night.