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I used to believe that I didn’t much like panettone, the round, fruit-studded, high-rise Italian sweet bread that’s a popular holiday-season treat. I’d tried plenty of them, over the years, loaves picked up at local specialty-import shops and plated out at parties or given as gifts. Their lavishly illustrated cardboard boxes promised richness and festivity, but I found it hard to muster enthusiasm for the cakey rounds inside, which were dry and crumbly as week-old brioche. Then, a few years ago, a friend presented me with a thick, shiny box—minimal in its design, no rococo flourishes or swoopy landscapes—and promised that this panettone would change my life. It was a grand pronouncement, to be sure, but after my first bite I understood the hyperbole: this was a panettone so different from the one-note specimens I’d tried before that it might as well have been a different species of baked good entirely. Beneath the burnished, slightly sticky crust was a crumb light as breath. The piece I tore off for myself seemed to melt a little against the ambient heat of my fingers. In my mouth, it nearly dissolved, like cotton candy. The tender bread was just barely sweet, with bits of dried fruits and nuts suspended in the matrix of doughlike dewdrops on a spider’s web. Panettone, I have since learned, is a dichotomous food: there’s magnificence, and then there’s stultifying disappointment, with little in between.
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Since my panettone awakening, I’ve become a minor obsessive. I do not recommend making it yourself: I’ve learned that one of the reasons for the great gulf between worthwhile panettone and the other sort is that it is infamous among bakers as one of the most difficult recipes in the global canon. First, a complex, multistage proofing process is needed to get the heavy, yolk- and butter-enriched batter to reach an ideal degree of loft and levity. After all that rising and forming, a loaf takes on additional height while baking in the oven, lifting vertically in its paper wrapper, like a soufflé; also like a soufflé, it runs the risk of collapse once it’s removed from the oven. To offset this possibility, the loaves are flipped upside down to cool, skewered through their lower circumferences on dowels and left to hang, bat-like, until the steam and heat, and their softening effects, have dissipated. (For years, the baker Olga Koutseridi has chronicled her panettone experimentation via Instagram; it’s genuinely riveting content.)
Apricot and Salted Caramel Panettone, from Olivieri 1882.
One other distinction of exceptional panettone is, alas, the cost: a loaf of the really good stuff runs three or four times what you’d pay for the shiny-boxed Italian-deli variety. Seventy or eighty dollars is a lot to shell out for what is, ultimately, a loaf of fancy bread with some sugar and nuts in it, but ’tis the season for frivolous expenditures, little treats, and moments of delight. Plus, a loaf of panettone is enormous, and, true to its fruitcake adjacency, it keeps forever—crack into one around Christmastime and keep it wrapped up airtight, and you can still happily nibble on it well into January. To experience true panettone bliss, try one of these three varieties, my favorites of the many I’ve tasted.
Panettone Biasetto, $70
This tall, golden Adonis, from the Padua kitchens of the Belgian Italian pastry chef Luigi Biasetto, has a rich citrus-and-vanilla perfume that wafts toward you the moment you unwrap its stately maroon-and-gold packaging. Tear open the toasty exterior to reveal a marigold-bright crumb, achieved thanks to the Technicolor yolks of superb eggs, and an extra squishy texture owing to acacia honey from Tuscany. It’s studded with bits of candied citrus rind, which are sweet and bitter and tart, plus raisins so plump and juicy they’re halfway back to being grapes. In a flourish of cheffy fussiness, Biasetto famously recommends that his panettone be served just above room temperature, which he suggests you achieve by resting it on the radiator for a few hours (a classic nonna move), or near (but not in!) a heated oven. He’s not wrong: that extra bit of warmth opens up the flavors and aromas, deepening the woodsiness of the vanilla and softening any lingering sharpness from the candied citrus. But, I can report from experience, it’s pretty wonderful at room temperature, too. Biasetto wisely suggests you eat your panettone “two or three times a day,” after each meal.
Panettone Biasetto, from the Belgian Italian pastry chef Luigi Biasetto.
Acetaia Leonardi Panettone Balsamico with Sour Cherry, $50-$60
Not too long ago, when I dropped by the Brooklyn culinary bookstore Archestratus (one of the only places in the city you can find a Biasetto this time of year), the owner, Paige Lipari, practically forced me to give this slightly unconventional panettone from Emilia-Romagna a try. It’s made by Acetaia Leonardi—which, as the name implies, is not a bakery but a balsamic-vinegar manufactory, in operation since 1871—and the yielding, buttery interior is shot through with a sultry ripple of balsamic crema. Maybe that’s what makes it noticeably denser than most other high-end panettone I’ve tried, with a slinky, melty chewiness that almost—but not quite—verges on the texture of cake. This isn’t salad-dressing vinegar; this is the sort of unctuous, viscous aged balsamic you drizzle on ice cream, fruity and dimensional. Leonardi makes two versions of panettone, one studded with raisins (more traditional) and another with preserved sour cherries. Lipari told me I’d prefer the cherry one, and she was right: the red fruit injects a note of sourness that coaxes out the sweet vinegar’s sharpness, a welcome pucker of intensity.
Olivieri 1882 Apricot and Salted Caramel Panettone, $95
Olivieri, a bakery in the Veneto, has been in operation for a hundred and forty-two years, and in that time it has more or less perfected the art of making panettone. Its classic version, with raisins and candied citrus, has the airy tenderness of perfection—as it should, given that it costs nearly a hundred dollars. But I’m especially enamored of one of the bakery’s more creative variations, which employs pieces of floral-sweet candied apricot and a gentle swirl of salted caramel. This second special ingredient lends a pointed confectionary aroma to the exterior, but inside (and on the palate) it makes more elemental contributions: a little extra sweetness, a tang of sea air. A good panettone has a sometimes relentless richness, and this bit of salt cuts through that, opening windows onto notes of honey (though there’s no honey), lemon, and enrapturing, sun-drenched butter. After having this panettone, I began sprinkling a bit of salt onto any panettone I tried; all were measurably improved, though I remain committed to the lovely loaf that opened my eyes to the innovation. How brilliant of Olivieri to bake the secret right in. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
