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Panettone Ingredients.
This is the perfect work-from-home bake - Most of the prep can be done the night before and the rest mostly involves waiting for it to rise. I managed to finish baking it by my lunch break and I left it to cool for most of the rest of the day.
Ingredients:
500g Strong White Flour
200g Glace Cherries (you can halve them, slice them or leave them whole) You can change out the cherries for chocolate chips.
100g Flaked Almonds (or to your preference) reserve some for sprinkling on top.
50g Caster sugar
140ml Warm milk
14g (2 sachets) instant yeast
5 eggs (free range gives the best flavour)
250g Unsalted Butter - softened
7g Salt
This cake, or should I rather say - bread is very light, buttery and rich. Nobody in my house likes the traditional fruit that goes into a traditional panettone, so this past Christmas, I made a Cherry Almond Panettone to take to work. It disappeared really quickly! Panettone is delicious toasted with margarine and a cup of esspresso.
Note:
There are two stages to this recipe. The first part can be done quickly in the evening the night before.
The Night Before:
Put the flour, salt, sugar, yeast eggs and milk into the bowl for your stand mixer. Using a dough hook start mixing slowly - to avoid a flour dust storm, until the mixture starts forming a dough. Add the soft butter and keep mixing, taking care to scrape the sides clean into the mixture to incorporate everything. Add the Glace cherries and most of the almonds. I didn't bother draining every last bit of the syrup off. Mix it until the almonds and cherries are well incorporated. Get a large plastic or glass bowl and either oil it or grease it with the foil from the unsalted butter. Tip all the dough mixture into the greased bowl and cover it with greased clingwrap or greased parchment paper. I recommend wrapping it tightly and leaving a generous amount of space for it to rise.
Put the mixture into the fridge and leave it there overnight. It is this overnight rise which gives it the rich panettone flavour.
The tin can be prepared the night before. Traditionally, a special paper form is bought to match a special tin. I didn't fuss with that - as you can see I extended the height of my standard 20cm cake tin with parchment and used the removable tin bottom to secure the paper in place. Cutting even parallel slits in the lower third of the paper makes it easier to adjust the squareness of the paper form before adding the dough. I used the full width as it comes off the roll.
First thing the next morning:
Take the dough out of the fridge and shape it into a neat ball at the bottom of the tin. Just squish it enough to knock back the dough.
If you have a 40 degree C setting or a bread proving setting on your oven or in the warming drawer, you can set the temperature to 40 degrees fan, or you can leave it somewhere warm in the kitchen. An alternative is to have the oven on for a short time and to put the tin in when it's cooled below 40 degrees.
Leave it for up to 3 hours to rise. You can see how far mine rose - without the parchment, I would have had a mess on my hands. The second cake you can see was exactly the same - except I substituted the cherries for chocolate chips.
Once the dough has risen, take it out of the oven to preheat it to 160 degrees fan. Put egg wash on the top of the cake and sprinkle it with the flaked almonds.
If after 30 minutes, the cake is getting too brown for your taste, cut a circle of tin foil and place it on top of the cake - don't wedge it in, but cover the top so that the air can still get in. Bake it for at least a total of 50 minutes. Check it with a skewer or knife - when it comes out clean - it's ready.
(By the way - the foil trick works with anything - including the pastry on Beef Wellington)
Traditionally panettones are hung upside-down to cool using long skewers through the base of the paper. I just waited a few moments before very carefully peeling off the paper. The tops on mine did settle a little but it in no way affected the taste.
Two Panettones cooling
There is nothing stopping you from using the same recipe without the fruit, nuts or chocolate and making a basic brioche.
Let me know how yours turns out. Happy baking.