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Submitted by sweetbird on December 29, 2011 - 10:58am Christmas Stollen - my adaptation of an Anna Thomas recipe
One of my most beloved cookbooks is the original Vegetarian Epicure by Anna Thomas. It began its life with me in San Francisco in the early 1970s and has traveled with me ever since, now nestled on a bookshelf in upstate New York. It is in tatters with no binding left, but that only makes me love it more. It is well used. I’ve made the Christmas Stollen from that book every year since I first got it, and it’s something that my family and I look forward to throughout the year. Because it’s an unyeasted “quick bread” recipe, it’s different from any Christmas Stollen I’ve ever tried, and from the first bite it stole my heart. It’s deeply rich from the butter and cream cheese, gently sweet from the fruit, rum and a bit of sugar, all balanced by the tang of lemon, mace and cardamom. A few years ago I decided to write a note to Anna Thomas letting her know that her stollen had become a treasured tradition in my family, and to my delight she wrote back a lovely note! Her newest book Love Soup is wonderful too, by the way. I made some changes way back in the 70s based on availability and personal preference and since it turned out so well I kept making it the same way. Here’s the version I’ve made all these years: Christmas Stollen (my adaptation of Anna Thomas’s recipe from The Vegetarian Epicure) w/metric conversions: 352 gms (2½ C.) unbleached AP flour 2 tsp. baking powder 125 gms (¾ C.) (or slightly less) sugar ½ tsp. salt ½ tsp. mace seeds of 5 - 6 cardamom pods, crushed (I usually use green) -or- ¼ tsp., rounded, powdered cardamom 100 gms (¾ C.) almond meal (or ground blanched almonds) ½ C. butter, cold 226 gms (1 C.) cream cheese (reduced fat OK), softened at room temperature 1 large egg, room temperature ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract (I use Madagascar Bourbon vanilla extract) 1/3 tsp. pure almond extract 2 Tbs. Bacardi light rum (original recipe calls for brandy, which I haven’t tried yet) 85 gms (½ C.) seedless dark raisins 85 gms (½ C.) golden raisins finely grated peel of 1 organic lemon (use a rasp for the finest consistency)
Preheat oven to 350°F. Sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, mace and cardamom. Stir in the almond meal. Cut the butter in with a pastry blender until mixture resembles coarse sand. In a blender, cream the egg with the softened cream cheese, vanilla, almond extract and rum. Pour it into a bowl and mix in the fruit and lemon peel. Gradually stir in the flour mixture until everything is more or less incorporated, then turn it onto a lightly floured board and knead it for a couple of minutes -- just until smooth. At first it’s more like “smooshing” or squeezing things together than kneading. It will seem dry and you might have the urge to add some liquid, but resist if you can.
Flatten into an oval about 10″ long by 8″ wide. With the blunt edge of a knife, crease it just off center, length-wise. Fold the smaller side over the larger side and form it into a slight crescent moon shape.
Bake in preheated oven for about 45 minutes, or up to an hour, depending on thickness. This year I made mine a little thicker than usual and needed the full hour. Turn at 20 minutes. Watch closely after 40 minutes or so and protect it with strips of aluminum foil if it’s getting too brown at the edges. Allow it to cool before dusting it with confectioner’s sugar. Happy New Year to all! Janie
NOTE: The differences in my recipe from Anna Thomas’s original are: - I use light Bacardi rum; she uses brandy (same amount) - I omit the candied lemon peel and substitute grated peel of 1 lemon - I use seedless dark raisins instead of currants (same amount) - I reduce the sugar somewhat (¾ C. is the original amount, but I usually use a well rounded ½ C.) - I use Bob’s Red Mill almond flour if I have it available because it’s good and it’s easier than grinding blanched almonds - I usually substitute slightly reduced fat cream cheese Submitted by AprilSky on December 26, 2011 - 11:06pm My Christmas dinnerChristmas has not been a convention in our culture. But people love to celebrate the day as a holiday. I, too, love the Christmas spirit and atmosphere. I still remember the family that invited me to their home for Christmas Eve and the big feast they offered while I was studying in Kansas. The warm hospitality has always been the mark of my American experience. The Christmas dinner is pretty much a warming-up event for our Chinese New Year which is less than 4 weeks away. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law's family were invited. They enjoyed the meal a lot. I call the dinner " The east meets the west". Except roasted chiken, focaccia, and paella, I also prepared our traditional hot pot to warm up everyone. Temperature in the Christmas Eve was close to 10 degrees C.
The roasted chicken was a total success. It's the highlight of the dinner that night.
Crispy outside and juicy inside. Yammy!!
Paella is another focus. The broccoli made itself Christmas tree~~~Haha~~~
Submitted by maylieQ on December 26, 2011 - 11:38am Santa Claus Bread
I made this santa bread from Taste of Home for Christmas Eve using the lion house dinner roll recipe. It was super easy and fast! I should have rotated him halfway through baking, but he still looks cute.... and he was delicious!! Submitted by sadears on December 24, 2011 - 5:20pm What type of bread....What type of bread goes well with turkey? Just wondering if any of you have a preference. Stephanie Submitted by freerk on December 12, 2011 - 5:03am Chestnut-Mincemeat Monkey BreadChestnut-Mincemeat Monkey Bread Baking is getting more festive by the day. The BreadLab is a mess after a trial bake for the X-mas specials that are up for the coming two weeks. Chestnuts The flavor and texture of chestnut can really lift a dish, when used in moderation. The other week, running through Amsterdam's hottest local produce supermarket Marqt, there were some fresh chestnuts available. They would look real rustic, together with the red onions and roseval potatoes in the basket on the kitchen table... They have been screaming not be wasted for looking pretty ever since, and today, when the sour cherries on syrup started their siren song, things started coming together. The theme clearly being nuts and fruits, let's cross the channel and ponder on that typical British dish; Mincemeat Something allegedly edible that I managed to avoid for its name alone in the first two decades of my life. To the foreign ear it sounds like something with mutton sausage and a lot of gravy in it, that has been sitting in the cellar for three months. There is a lot of that where I come from. No need to explore. Only to find out in the next decade that there is actually no meat involved at all, well... suet. But that was way back when. I do sometimes use lard and suet and the likes, but this sweet bread needs to go down easy with every one. After making a basic mincemeat, boil the fresh chestnuts in their skins until tender, but still chewy. Chopping them up I decided to just chuck them in with the mincemeat, and that worked wonderfully well. Sour cherries Sour cherries belong to New Year's Eve for me. I never knew that until I rediscovered the taste of them recently, the syrupy variety. I was immediately taken back; in my young years, when the adults would be seriously boozing in the New Year, the kids were allowed to drink something that was called "children's-liquor" (No, I kid you not). It came in a bottle that vaguely resembled the grown-ups' version. It was a deep red, sweet as hell and... without alcohol (I guess the marketing guys drew their lines somewhere in the sixties...). But that didn't seem to matter to us, as I remember. For me it was one of the high lights; that entire day, going around the neighborhood to wish every one a Happy New Year, and every house I entered had a glass of that stuff waiting. My Italian shop around the corner carries some nice jars with sour cherries on syrup, the blue one; Raisins, apples, lemon zest, currants. Take whatever you have lying around to whip together a fruity, spicy layer of mincemeat that will ooze through the monkey bread during the bake. The chestnuts are optional if you are an avid hater (there seem to be quite a few out there), but it does give the flavor a nice twist, and, if chopped coarsely and not boiled to pieces, a different texture that works well with all the sticky caramel and the soft buns. Since my first monkey bread, traditionally round, was rising all over the place, out of its baking tin, I decided the second bake would have to be in the biggest tin around... and that happened to be a square one. A happy accident, I would say! Square Chestnut-Mincemeat Monkey Bread For the (mini portion) mincemeat: 1 small apple If you like your apple firm, leave them out, while you bring the beer and all the other ingredients to a slow boil. When everything comes together and the butter is mixed in, add the apple and turn off the gas. Stir and cool. You can find some good tips over here on how to boil your chestnuts, if you chose to go DIY all the way. For the dough: 500 gr. bread flour to sugar the monkey dough: 100 gr. caster sugar For the caramel sauce: 100 gr. butter Method Mix the dry ingredients together in a stand mixer. Add just enough milk for the dough to come together. Add the eggs and the butter little by little after about 4 minutes. Mix on low speed for about 15 minutes to develop an elastic dough. Transfer to an oiled container, cover and rest until double in size, for about an hour to one hour and a half at room temp. Mix together the fine caster sugar with the spices. When the dough has risen, deflate it gently and shape into a cylinder. When the dough resists, give it a few minutes rest before you continue. Cut up the doughroll in small pieces, deliberately uneven in size and shape. Toss the dough pieces in the sugar and place in the oiled tin. They will expand considerably; loosely spread the first layer around your BIG (improv) monkey bread pan. Scoop the cooled down chestnut-mincemeat over the first layer of dough, and then cover with a second layer of sugared dough bits. Cover and let proof untill the dough has puffed up. Preheat the oven to 180° C. Heat the butter with the brown sugar and gently pour this over the proofed dough. Bake for about 35 minutes, turning it halfway into the bake to ensure even browning. Be careful with the top; don't let it burn! After the bake, let the bread cool for about 10 minutes before inverting the monkey bread onto a rack. Leave to cool completely before slicing. Enjoy! You can really do me a big favor by endorsing the BreadLab initiative. Every 'like' will get us closer to funding a 6 episode documentary on 'the best bread in the world'. Thank you in advance! Freerk Submitted by nellapower on October 9, 2011 - 5:35am Dresden Christmas StollenI have been lurking in the forum for over two years now, soaking up all that I could about sourdough bread-baking. All this time, I wished there was something that I could give back, that I could share with the community. Seeing that I am still a bread amateur compared to you guys, I thought I will have to wait a few more years for this blessed moment. But today, as I was getting my kitchen ready for baking, it hit me. There actually is something I can share with you: my recipe and my experience with baking Dresden Christmas Stollen. I know, there is already one recipe around by harrygerman. My recipe is similar, but with even more butter and fruit. This stollen is an amazing thing: rich, heavy, and fruity. The dough is different from anything else I know and a little tricky to work with. Before I give you the recipe and the technique, I will start by telling you a little about the history of Dresden Stollen. Seeing that there are very different stollen recipes around, I think you need this little introduction to understand how the Dresden stollen is different and why it is worth making, despite all the effort. In Saxony (the region in the East of Germany, where Dresden is), stollen has been a tradition Christmas bread for centuries (the first written documents about stollen are from the 1329). At that time, however, stollen was a light, yeasted bread, containing nothing but flour, water, yeast and sometimes oil. It was sold and eaten during he pre-Christmas period of Advent fast. Saxony was then catholic, so the use of any richer ingredients such as butter or milk was strictly forbidden. The Saxon rulers, however, were apparently dissatisfied with their Advent bread, so they applied to the pope for a permission to use butter in their stollen. The pope allowed this in 1491, on the condition that they atone for their sin by donating liberally to the church. Although meant only for the rulers and gentry, the pope's permission was quickly applied with much more liberation. Maybe to compensate for centuries of butter-free fasting, the Saxons transformed the stollen into a rich, buttery bread stuffed with fruits. No longer a fast meal, the stollen became a Christmas celebration bread. After a while Saxony turned protestant, but the stollen remained. Of course, with its centuries of tradition, the title "Dresden Stollen" was soon used for trading purposes, unfortunately not always with high-quality products. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the traditional Dresden stollen bakeries fought against the on-slough of so-called Dresden stollen. Today, "Dresdner Stollen" is a registered trademark and only selected backers from Dresden area can use it, provided that their stollen meet criteria with regard to the minimum amount of butter and dried fruits. Enough of history, let's look at the bread. A real Dresden stollen contains at least 500g Butter and 650g sultanas per 1000g flour. This makes it extremely heavy and rich. Furthermore, the stollen is traditionally heavily coated in icing sugar. The bread needs to ripe for at least 3 weeks in order to develop its flavours and texture and keeps in proper conditions easily for several months. I have started baking stollen some ten years ago, when I moved to Dresden. I now bake 2-3 batches each year before Christmas. For my husband, stollen is something to look forward to throughout the whole year. Even when we spent six month in Finland last year, there was no questions that I will bake his beloved stollen. The recipe that I have here is based on a century old recipe for Dresden Christmas stollen, that Dresden bakeries use as a foundation. Of course, I have adapted it to suit our tastes. You are free to do the same. Just what ever you do, do not cut down the fat! Without the fat, the stollen will never keep as long and it will not develop the proper texture and taste. The same goes for the amount of fruits. You can play with the sugar though, for example leave out the sugar coat (I prefer our stollen uncoated). Right, enough said, here is the recipe: Ingredients: 1000 g flour (fine, weak flour; all purpose flour should do nicely) 0. Save the date 0. Preferment 0. Soaking 1. Dough 2. Fruits 3. Divide, form, and rise 4. Score and bake
6. Store 7. Eating So to sum up, a Dresden stollen is not hard to bake. All it takes are good quality ingredients, some muscle and a lot of patience. The reward is a truly unusual bread. Although I am not German and grew up baking other Christmas goodies, stollen has become to me a personification of Christmas. You take the best, you do your best, you wait for the occasion, and then you enjoy it in full. I hope someone might have a go at my Christmas stollen. I'll be happy to help you. Best, Nella Submitted by honeymustard on April 14, 2011 - 4:36am Let them eat breadMy partner's father and sister are here to visit. They each occupy one of the downstairs rooms that I meticulously cleaned before they arrived, so much so that I drove myself into hand-wringing worry over each minute detail in their rooms. Then the cobwebs in the other corners of the house laugh at me. Bread calms me down, I think. There's something about nurturing it into life (and--in the oven--subsequently killing it, I suppose, but I don't think about that) that I find calming. I rekindled this years-long love of bread-making while sitting in a cramped hostel room in Taipei right before Christmas. There was literally no floor space save for a two-by-three foot area where the door swung open in on our tiny apartment. We'd just had our Christmas Day supper. We'd found a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where the owner spoke just enough English and we spoke one or two food words in Mandarin to get across that we'd like chicken soup. He brought us two different kinds. He gave Dave his bowl and said, "Good for man." A minute later, he brought me mine, and said, "Good for woman." He smiled, waited for our reactions. Dave loved his while I didn't like his, and I loved mine while Dave wouldn't touch mine. What a wise man that had served us. He offered us zong: spiced rice with pork wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. The spices were just reminiscent enough of Christmas that I didn't miss the overwhelming bright lights, electronified versions of Christmas carols, or ads delivering guilt trips about not giving your loved ones enough presents. But let's be serious, I didn't miss it anyway.
Besides, I had already gotten all my relatives and friends presents, and now it was my turn. To be there when I first arrived back in Nova Scotia, I ordered the Tassajara Bread book. It seemed only fair that as an amateur bread baker, I have a cookbook focused on bread alone. I feel selfish, because with that bread book, I gave myself more than I had anyone else on my Christmas list. Breads were springier and lighter, tastier and more beautiful. I felt in control of the bread for once, and I fell in love. I set about to Google many times thereafter, finding more recipes, wanting to find more people who wrote books like Edward Espe Brown, those who seemed to understand the art much more than Betty Crocker. Eventually I found many sites, and it's almost overwhelming. I'm learning how to make bread all over again.
So for my first trick, I made poolish baguettes. From this recipe. Schmiechel is not amused because she cannot eat it.
But my visitors can eat bread. And they will eat all of it.
Submitted by alabubba on December 24, 2010 - 11:46pm Seasons GreatingsI just wanted to wish Seasons Blessings to everyone on the board. I love Christmas, it somehow brings out the best in people. Here are wishes for a fabulous holiday and a fantastic New Year. I hope you are surrounded by family and friends, that there is plenty of food and drink and love. Allan Submitted by Daisy_A on December 14, 2010 - 5:22pm My first panettone milanese: notes on the trial run, formula and method, with thanks for all advice!
Thanks to all who encouraged me with this project. I baked my trial run in a case made out of parchment, with a card and parchment bottom, moulded around the outside of a coffee tin, glued with flour and water paste. This was enough to take 500g of dough. The homemade case lasted the test run but got a bit battered. The high shape was also a bit hard to bake out. It has a Shakerish charm when spruced up with ribbon but was coming apart at the seams a bit after the bake. However, It did the job and I have now ordered some of the Italian cases. I looked at a range of formulae for panettone but knew that I wanted to use natural leaven. I was also keen to use an Italian recipe. The formula was an adaptation of a natural leaven panettone milanese from an Italian pastry chef, suggested by Nico. (Putting the URL in Google translate gets an English version for just over 2kg). I scaled this down to slightly less than 500g, reduced the fruit content a little and added lemon zest and a glaze. I reduced the fruit content in line with other formulae because I thought too much fruit would make a dense cake. However I didn't anticipate how much the cake would rise in the oven so will consider scaling it up again slightly. I also watched quite a few videos of Italian versions of panettone making posted by TFLers over the years, to get some idea of technique. The main difference was that I would be mixing by hand and most bakers I saw used a dough mixer or special kneader to mix the dough. Nevertheless, one of the videos described the kneader as mimicking the movement of 'a man's hands' so I guess the dough must have been trough needed originally? Well that was it - I could do this with 'a woman's hands' LOL. Andy suggested air kneading, which I use regularly for sourdough. It proved to be a very efficient way to develop the dough: More on that below. Below I've given my scaled down formula plus notes on method, particularly when I did things slightly differently from the original. Most departures were to make the dough easier to hand mix, in ways that were meant to keep the integrity of the formula. This is a beautifully balanced formula. It is not particularly sweet or buttery, which I think makes the dough easier for a beginner to handle. This also suits our tastes, although other bakers may prefer a more enriched formula. Nonetheless, it is shot through with beautiful, intense burst of flavour due to the peel, limoncello coated raisins, zest and essences. It is possible to make more enriched dough with this formula. Nico reports that up to 120g of both butter and sugar per kilo may be added. As the fruits give a lot of the flavour it’s worth making your own or going for a flavoursome store brand. I was wary of overdoing the essence this time and making the dough too 'perfumey': However I will try slightly more next time. Now I’ve kneaded it once I may try a bit more butter, to compare, but will keep the sugar content low, particularly as using the raisin yeast adds subtle fruit sugars. Do try this formula if you can. It's time consuming but I also found it soothing to just be rhythmically mixing and forming the panettone. Fills the house with gorgeous scents too! When cut into it had an airy crumb (phew), and tasted delicious. This formula suited us down to the ground and was a great find – thanks Nico! Some notes on initial preparation. 3-4 days before baking: strengthen your leaven. Many of you probably know this already, but it was interesting for me to learn how traditional Italian artisan panettones use a special stiff, sweet leaven. Instructions for making this are on the original link. Susan at Wild Yeast, whose detailed post on panettone baking was a great help, also gives a way of preparing a leaven, based on a regular sourdough. Such leavens have strong raising power but are not particularly acidic. They can take a sweet dough through a long fermentation without being broken down and without giving too sour a tang to the final dough. This type of leaven is traditionally refreshed every 4 hours for several days before being used. However as I have to be away from the starter for several hours at a time I did what Susan did and refreshed it at least twice a day over several days, stepping up feeds the day before baking. Over the last few weeks I have been using a leaven refreshed with raisin yeast water. This has proved to have very strong raising power. I also thought that as the yeast had grown strong in the presence of a lot of sugar from the raisins, it would cope well with enriched dough. This proved to be the case :-). More about making a raisin yeast water leaven plus much more on fruit and vegetable yeasts is on this thread, started kindly by RonRay, with great additions from Akiko and Karin. Following Susan's method I also used a gram of fresh yeast in Dough 1. I'm not sure I'd do that again as the power of the raisin leaven was awesome. I know from baguette making that over 12 hours even 1 g of yeast can produce a good rise. However the dough only needed to treble and it quadrupled on an unheated bench! Next time I think I will rely on the raisin yeast alone. The Italian instructions are for a leaven of about 44% hydration, fed with the flour used in the final dough. There is much debate about what flour to use for panettone. For the second dough I used only Waitrose Canadian Very Strong White Bread Flour at 15% protein. This indeed lives up to its name. I used a mixture of 66% of this flour and 34% of Italian Alimonti Organic Type 00 at 11% protein in the first dough, to give me a little bit extra extensibility as well as strength. I do have to say though, following advice from Nico, that I think using a strong flour in this formula is key to getting a strong dough and good aeration. My first test leaven for this project was around 50% hydration, fed with raisin water and the 66/34 flour mix. However in the end I did not use this but went back to my usual leaven. I’m not sure if it was because the Canadian flour is so strong and my yeasts had not been fed it before, or b <script src="/sites/all/modules/tinytinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js?J" type="text/javascript"></script>ecause low ambient temperatures slowed fermentation, but this mix produced a leaven that rose but which was so strong that it tended to ping in on itself. In the end it fermented less well than my normal leaven. Since my normal leaven had shown great rising power when used in sourdough, I switched back to that. This is a mix of existing starter, raisin water and 50/50 Waitrose Own plain white and plain wholemeal flours in 1:1.5:2 ratio (approximately 64% hydration?) I refreshed this over 3 days, moving as close as I could to 4 hourly feeds in the day before baking. Day before baking Dough 1 is prepared and ingredients are laid out for the next day. Although raisins traditionally go into panettone dry, as Nico pointed out they also benefit from being soaked in limoncello overnight! Had only a limoncello miniature :-( so shook raisins in enough limoncello and grappa to just coat them and left them in an airtight container on the bench. This made the limoncello flavour less intense but also meant that they were drier when used and so easier to work into the dough. The limoncello did provide a beautiful flavour, nonetheless. One panettone baker on video stresses setting out all the ingredients for the next day, the night before. I guess in bakeries you need to keep to this discipline. I was doing panettone after hours of paperwork for a Friday deadline, so finished first dough at 2am. and was reeling. I prepared the raisins but really wish I had done it all, even down to breaking eggs and keeping them in containers in the fridge. Had spare white but not yolk. Would have saved me up to 3/4 of an hour the next morning, while the leaven was fizzing like a volcano. Didn't help that we arrived to buy candied peel after the super-organised bakers who made their fruitcakes in September had bought the best of the bunch and that I decided that what had been left at the store was too wan. I then hastily threw my own together with organic orange peel, honey, grappa and sugar syrup while I did other things! Was yum, though. Baking day Sees the addition of Dough 1 to Dough 2, any decoration you might care to do and the baking and hanging of the panettone. Have been told it's better after 2 day's curing. Oh no…I was like a child at Christmas. Can I open it yet? The formula and method are below, with notes at the end about where my method was an adaptation of the original and what I might do differently another time. Have to say the first thing is I would do differently is have a good breakfast! My husband sat down to sourdough toast and eggs and would gladly have done some for me. However the leaven had risen so high that I just grabbed a bowl of muesli and ran! Several hours later I felt a bit giddy and realised I hadn't had very much to eat all day. Worth having a hearty breakfast, as although it is pleasurable mixing this by hand, it also demands endurance. Well worth it, however!
As a beginner baker, normally baking alone, one of my key needs has been to know more or less what the dough is meant to look like at different stages. When dealing with sweet dough for the first time, I was really helped by the detailed pictures and write up of such doughs given on txfarmer's blog. Many thanks for that tx. I have included some pictures below, hoping they might be of some value to others. My apologies if some are dim as they were taken in low light in short time gaps between baking stages. Row 1 is Dough 1 and after that Dough 2. Dough 1 also had egg in it but that stage was so messy no photos were taken! Dough 2 pictures on Row 2 start after egg has been added. Air kneading is on this link. Be forewarned, however, the video can take up to 10 minutes to load.
Below is more information on formula and method. Have done my best with this, but maths is not my strong suit. I would be glad to be told of any errors. Spare column is for any bakers who want to add baker’s percentages. I’ve also kept this column in case I have a sudden upsurge in maths skills and want to add them myself! Hydration of total formula: (71 water 23 raisin water) 94/153 (97+38+9+9) = 61% (Please note raisin water also contains sugar and yeast but I couldn’t estimate how much. Working hydration might therefore be slightly lower.) Updated: Just trying this again and noted 9g more butter has to be added to final dough so added this to chart for Dough 2. Is already in Total Formula. Apologies for inconvenience!
Further notes: Preparing panettone leaven: (See notes at top of blog about how the method in the grid differs <script src="/sites/all/modules/tinytinymce/tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js?J" type="text/javascript"></script>from traditional Milanese preparation). Mixing of first dough: In one of the Italian videos, I saw bakers start mixing by making a syrup solution in a machine. This seemed a good approach for hand mixing as I find sugar harder to incorporate by hand than either eggs or butter. I used some fresh yeast, as the raisin yeast was untested in sweet dough. However I think the raisin yeast would have been enough. It is, however, possible to mix fresh yeast with regular sourdough and get a great result, as Susan does. Very few methods for mixing panettone call for autolysis. Many, and particularly those for mixers, call for all ingredients to be incorporated at once. However I find it hard to imagine making bread now, without autolysis, particularly when the method calls for strong gluten formation, as this one does. The Canadian flour is very strong and sucks in water. The raisin water is also stickier than filtered water. After mixing the first dough looked a little dry to me so I added 10g extra raisin water. This was a departure from the formula so be led by your own dough at this stage. In my case adding raisin water also added more yeast. Also I see on the videos that the traditional Italian first doughs look quite firm. Temperature and first proof: Ambient temperature in our house was around C19 at this point, falling to 15C at night. The recipe recommends an ambient temperature of 20-22C throughout the whole process. Lower temperatures did not retard the first dough, however, as it quadrupled in 12 hours. I was worried the dough had gone over and that given the next ‘feed’ only included 24g of flour, it would not have power to do the second rise. This was unfounded as I hope you can see from the pictures above! However, next time I would try to take the dough off when trebled. I would also try to weigh all ingredients for Day 2 the evening before, if possible so that I could add part 2 straight away if Dough 1 was very well developed. Mixing of final dough: After adding the butter, I made some strategic departures from the method of the Milanese formula, in order to help the hand mixing. The method recommends that the fruit be added before mixing. When the fruit is incorporated no more kneading is done and the final dough is left to rest for 1 hour. However I didn’t feel that I could mix a strong enough dough by hand without further kneading. Thanks to Andy’s great advice I was also going to air knead and I wanted to mix and test the dough to full windowpane without having to bother about bits of orange peel and raisins flying in all directions! Following Andy’s advice again, I cut the fruit in once the dough had reached a very strong windowpane. I have never worked a dough to a very strong windowpane before. In fact I’ve never done such an enriched dough before. However I hope you can see from the picture at the start of Row 3 that the dough was very strong and pulled to ‘latex glove’ consistency. (My dh was at the shops at the time I took this picture so I got my friend ET to do the windowpane!). Joking – if ET had been there I would have got him to help with the mixing! I was a bit concerned about spotting dough readiness but found, once started, that I had a sense of the dough I didn’t have when I started baking. For example, at one point I decided to rest the dough. I checked the timer and it had 4 seconds to go! Uncanny but I guess these skills build up? However one of the things that helped me the most in terms of judging the strength of the dough was the picture of a strong windowpane that txfarmer gives on this post. Many thanks for giving such a clear illustration. Without it I think I would have stopped too soon. Second proof: Milanese method suggests ¾ of an hour at 22C for this. However at lower ambient temperature this took about 2 hours, including ¾ final warming under plastic wrap with a bowl of hot water to take the dough from 19C to 24C. Glazing: I glazed when the dough was just below the top of the case. Egg white was very ‘gloopy’ and hard to measure accurately, so 16g is an approximation. It could have been nearer 19g. I'd say be guided by how well your own mixture holds together. The ideal consistency, following Nico’s colomba method, is that of a ‘dense cream’. I added almonds on top in a star shape. Will place even closer together next time, if I use them, as the panettone rose so much the almonds ended up more like a fringe. Might invest in some pearl sugar next time, although may also use only a simple glaze so that dry ingredients don't risk impeding the crust expansion. (Have done this now in the wider panettone moulds and almonds in a ring in the middle weighed down the fragile dough so I think I would split the nuts and scatter or space them more widely, as seen on Sylvia, breadsong and txfarmer's panettones). Baking: Thanks to the foil tent, the panettone top did not burn but it was vulnerable because of the abnormally tall homemade case. I think 500g of dough would bake out more evenly in a lower case. I also greased the panettone case like a mad thing, because I was sure it would stick. In the end I peeled it off anyway, so this may have been superfluous and may have reduced browning? Any ideas on that front welcome. However, I recommend the tenting technique over turning the oven temperature down to avoid burning the top, as suggested in some methods. I found, with a relatively weak oven, that when I dropped the oven temperature, the internal temperature of the panettone dropped from 186F to 177F. Checking with a digital probe used outside of the oven that the temperature had climbed again, took so long that the panettone began to wobble on its base like a drunk at the bus stop. Crimped a bit but didn't collapse. Was a close run thing so won't do that again! Will either tent earlier or get a thermometer that can be inserted while the panettone remains in the oven. My first panettone milanese: notes on the trial run, formula and method, with thanks for all advice! Daisy_A 2010
© Daisy_A 2010 FIrst published on The Fresh Loaf, December 15, 2010 at 12.22 GM time. I love to share bread stories and read other bakers' posts about bread. If you republish this page for 'fair use' please acknowledge authorship and provide a link to the original URL. Please note, however, I do not support the unauthorized and unattributed publishing of my text and images on for-profit websites.. |
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