Bruno's Pandoro from Glezer's Artisan Baking (take one)
Over the weekend, I finally worked up the courage to try making Bruno's Pandoro from Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking. I followed the the formula almost exactly. The one thing I changed was to replace all of the whole eggs in the formula with an equal amount of egg yolks by weight. I had the idea in my mind that this would give the final product better color and flavor (more on this later).
Though time consuming, the process was much easier than I anticipated. The dough wasn't entirely successful. As you can see in the photo below, there were little coagulated chunks that never broke up. I'm guessing they came from the step where I added flour and egg yolk to the first dough. The egg yolk bound with the dry flour to form little chunks that couldn't be dispersed by mixing.
It took a full 27 hours at around 72 degrees F for the dough to go from this:
to this:
Here's the result (from the larger mold)
In retrospect, I should have filled the molds just a tad more to get that big pillowy base that pandoro should have. Given the limited amount of oven spring, it was the correct decision to bake when I did, or the loaves would have collapsed. I had to decrease the oven temperature from recommended 350 F to 325 F about twenty minutes into the bake because the tops were getting too dark.
The crumb:
I wasn't too happy about the crumb, which had a spongy cake-like texture. I'm looking for a pillowy soft bread-like texture with shreddable strands. I'm not sure how much of this shortcoming is attributed to the amount of egg yolk I used, and how much is attributed to adding the butter/cocoa butter to the mix too rapidly or too soon. The uneven chunks indeed proved to be unpleasant in texture.
The egg yolk flavor turned out to be too strong and gave the bread a "gamey" flavor, if that makes any sense. Next time, I'd like to make the loaf a little sweeter, use whole eggs just as the formula prescribes, increase the vanilla, and perhaps increase the proportion of cocoa butter, which I would like to stand out more in the flavor profile.
Despite the pandoro not being perfect this time around, it still makes for a great breakfast (smeared with nutella), and it was a lot of fun to work with the silky, runny dough.
Comments
That crumb looks pretty good to me. I can understand your frustration with the yolk/flour lumps.
I suspect that by substituting all yolks in place of whole eggs you effectively increased the amount of fat and decreased the amount of water in the bread. You may want to hold off with the other changes until after you've made it again following the recipe. The other flavors may come through more clearly when whole eggs are used and not require boosting.
Paul
that's a good point. The egg yolk was pretty dominatint. I barely tasted the mild sourdough tang.
Really good effort. The crumb looks great! I see you managed to hold of the moulds then! I don't know if you saw it, but I made my version again recently (it's not sourdough). I dressed it up and made some pandoro sugar to go with it.
I see that you increased the amount of flavor elements in yours this time around (honey, cocoa butter, etc). Did you have to adjust any other quantities accordingly?
I made it exactly as the posted recipe. I felt I needed to add more flavour. The dough was very slack but still manageable. I think I was taking the flour to its limits though.
Those look great to me!
I've been eyeing that recipe and wanting to make it, it's very helpful to hear of your experiences. I was also hoping to produce the light, billowy strands of bread that you describe, had it once and have been wanting it again ever since.
Please post your results on TFL! I'd love to learn from your experiences as well :-)
Hey YY,
Your Pandoro looks great! I made this recipe a few times, and was equally impressed how much easier it was than anticipated to develop the dough. Having said that, in the end I wasn't too impressed with the taste and texture. I expected it to be much softer. When I was in Italy and got a chance to eat "the real thing", I still had the same discrapency going between what I tasted and what I expected. I guess I made the pandoro taste different in my imagination than it really does :-)
They are still great though, and by all means delicious, especiaaly when dipped in Santos wine!
Here a pic of last year's Pandoro's (in the snow!)
Thanks for sharing!
Freerk
Thanks, Freerk!
I agree that the pandoro I've tried is not the same as the pandoro that exists in my head. My mission is to (someday, hopefully) bring the imaginary pandoro into reality. By the way, I'm really enjoying your Bread Lab videos. Keep them coming!
Congratulations on such good baking! Your pandoro looks great and, at least, in my opinion, your crumb's texture is VERY good. In order to have long shreddable strands in pandoro, it is helpful to use the very strong flour, and mix the yolks into the dough one by one, adding at the same time sugar. That the technique used by Adriano Continisio in his famous blog about Italian breads and brioches "Profumo di lievito".
thanks for the tip! I used King Arthur's Sir Lancelot flour (14% protein), but I definitely rushed the addition of the yolks and sugar - I dumped about a half cup worth of yolks in at a time.