Panettone

A year ago, I had every intention of baking panettone for the holidays, and then somehow Christmas was gone in a flash and my kitchen saw not a single loaf of festive, fruit-filled bread. So this year, I was determined to make it happen. I even earmarked some of the candied orange peel I made in November for this very purpose. I used the panettone recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice which is a two-day process unless you need to bring your sourdough starter to room temperature and feed it before you get started in which case it becomes a three-day process. The first two days’ tasks are minimal, but the waiting time between days is necessary. This panettone recipe is made with a fairly rich dough with an egg and an additional egg yolk and half a cup of butter, and even though the dough is soft and a little sticky, it wasn’t difficult to knead or shape. The fun part was mixing the dried and candied fruits with rum, Gran Marnier, and vanilla so they could sit overnight to plump and absorb great flavors before being mixed into the dough. I made one big loaf in an eight inch springform pan and used the rest of the dough for muffin tin-sized mini panettones.

So, step one was making a wild yeast sponge with a barm or starter, milk, and flour. The sponge sat at room temperature to ferment for four hours before spending the night in the refrigerator. Also, on that day, the dried and candied fruits were soaked in rum, an orange or lemon extract and I chose to use Gran Marnier instead, and vanilla and left to sit overnight. I used dried sour cherries, dried cranberries, golden raisins, and chopped candied orange peel. The next day, the wild yeast sponge was brought up to room temperature before mixing the dough. I used a stand mixer and combined flour, sugar, salt, and instant yeast before adding the sponge, the whole egg, and an egg yolk. Water was added until the dough came together, it was allowed to rest for a bit, and then softened butter was worked into the dough before the soaked fruit mixture was added. It was kneaded with a dough hook for a few minutes, and then transferred to a floured board. The almonds were worked in while kneading by hand. Because this is a sticky dough and you don’t want to add too much flour while kneading, I used a bench scraper to lift and turn the dough while kneading with the other hand. It was left to ferment for two hours, shaped into one big loaf and some muffin sized pieces, and then all of that proofed for two more hours. For the big loaf in the springform pan, I placed a parchment collar around the sides and a parchment circle in the bottom of the pan. Last, the big loaf baked for about an hour, and the minis were pulled from the oven after about 25 minutes. The bread should reach 185 degrees F in the center.

If this bread counts in any way as a fruitcake, then it’s my favorite fruitcake ever. In fact, I’m thinking this should become an annual tradition. I can try different dried and candied fruit and different liquors or liqueurs each time, and I may never make the same panettone twice. The soft, brioche-like bread was irresistible warm from the oven, and it keeps well wrapped in foil too. It was so enjoyable simply sliced and toasted over the next few days, I never got around to trying it as French toast or in bread pudding, but that’s just another reason to make it again next year.

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.

Kaiser Rolls

When I finally started baking from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I didn’t have good luck with the first two breads I tried. Maybe I chose poorly and should have started with less fussy varieties, but the efforts weren’t completely wasted. I became more familiar with pre-ferments and how chilling them overnight before mixing them into a dough develops flavor. Flavor was definitely not a problem with those first two breads, but I decided to take a break from ciabatta and pugliese and attempt Kaiser rolls. I wanted to jump right in and order a Kaiser roll stamp to make the distinctive cuts in the tops of the rolls, but given my track record with this book, I decided to wait and see how the first batch went before buying a special tool. The stamp makes the pinwheel cuts with one press. There’s also an alternative suggested in the book which involves making a knotted kind of roll that looks similar. I decided to just make multiple cuts in a pinwheel pattern using a lame. The rolls turned out fine, so I’ll have to order the stamp for next time.

Once again, a pre-ferment, this time a pate-fermentee, was mixed and chilled in the refrigerator overnight. The pate-fermentee was brought up to room temperature and then mixed into a dough with flour, salt, barley malt syrup, yeast, an egg, vegetable oil, and water. The dough was kneaded and then fermented for two hours. It was divided into eight pieces which were left to relax for ten minutes before shaping each into a Kaiser roll with pinwheel cuts on top. Then, oddly enough, each roll was placed top side down on a semolina-dusted baking sheet. The pretty, swirly cuts were smashed. That just seemed wrong. After 45 minutes, the rolls were flipped cut side up, and I ended up re-cutting the swirls into most of them. They proofed for another 30 minutes while the oven warmed. Then, I had some questions. The rolls pictured in the book have glossy tops that I assumed could only be achieved with an egg wash. However, the instructions for pre-baking were to simply mist with water and sprinkle with poppy seeds or sesame seeds. I proceeded with just water and sprinkled poppy seeds. That was question one. Question two was why was the oven spritzed with water after loading the rolls? Steam produces a crispy crust and these should have been tender and shiny rather than crisp. So, as suspected, water on the rolls and water spritzed in the oven resulted in crisp surfaced rolls that were perfectly fine and tasty but completely lacking gloss, and next time I will try an egg wash and no water sprayed in the oven.

It was a lot of fun to make Kaiser rolls at home for the first time, and they were delicious rolls. Sally, who is a great bread baker at Bewitching Kitchen, has told me that Reinhart’s later books include slightly different techniques with more consistent results. It will be interesting to bake from and compare the more recent books. Not that I’m giving up on this one. I’ve learned so much, it was almost like bread college in a book. I’ll definitely be trying more from it, but up next, I have to show you how I used these homemade Kaiser rolls.

I’m submitting this to Yeastspotting where you’ll find some seriously well-made bread.