Chocolate Panettone with White Chocolate Morsels

I ran across this recipe at Il Pasticcione, an Italian site with a lot of great panettone recipes.  I have kind of gotten hooked on making panettone so I thought I would give this one a try.  I did make an adjustment to the recipe as I made this on impulse and didn't have time to go through the series of proper builds for an Italian starter.  What I did was take a hint from the Brioche au Levain recipe that is on this site and made a quick, stiff starter by combining 50g of my 100% hydration starter (which luckly for me is very mild in flavor), 100g of water and 100g of King Arthur bread flour, mixed that together and let it sit for about 4-5 hours till it tripled.  Other than that, I followed the recipe as it was written.  I do not speak Italian but I speak Spanish pretty well so I think I was able to translate the recipe pretty accurately.  It turned out great.  The first rise took less than the prescribed 12-14 hours, I put it to rise before I went to bed and it had already tripled by 9 hours.  The second rise took about 5 hours.  I did not glaze the panettone before baking, just cut an "X" in the middle and put in a pat of butter due to the already rather large amount of chocolate I was afraid glazing would make it overly sweet.  For me, I had to bake it longer than 50  minutes (65 minutes)  and I baked it to an internal temperature of 190 degrees F (87.7C) to ensure that it would not fall apart when I turned it upside down to cool.  I let it cool for 12 hours before trying.  It was good, light, moist, airy, "shreddy" texture a lot of nice big pockets and despite my last minute starter, it was not at all sour in flavor to me, although the rather large amount of white chocolate that goes into this would probably have covered up what tartness may have been there.  Great recipe for the chocolate lover, although I have to admit I think I prefer the traditional raisin and candied peel panettone best of all.  Here is the recipe. I will add pictures if I can figure out how to get them in here.

This makes enough for 1 large panettone that will fit into a 1 kg or 1 lb mold (6" in diameter - the size you get from KA Flour)

First Dough

210 grams flour

50 grams water

80 grams sugar (dissolved in the 50 grams of water)

110 grams natural starter (see description above for my short cut, apologizes to the purists)*

110 grams egg yolks

115 grams butter

25 grams water at 30C

25 grams hazelnut paste (I had some on hand so I used this) or chocolate/hazelnut paste (gianduia)

Mix the yeast with the egg yolks for 4 minutes, alternate adding the sugar/water mixture with the flour making sure each addition is well incorporated and that you have an elastic dough, add the hazelnut paste, the room temperature butter in small amounts and finally add the 25 grams of water.  Let rise at 28C (82.4F) for 12-14 hours (it should triple in volume).  Total mixing time should probably be no more than 20 minutes.  I just made sure mine had a nice windowpane.  I was mixing with a Magic Mill/Electrolux using the roller/scraper.

Second dough

50 grams flour

30 grams egg yolks

25 grams sugar

25 grams butter

6 grams salt

300 grams white chocolate pieces

60 grams chocolate paste (made with 75 grams of sugar, 75 grams of dextrose or corn syrup, 200 grams of water, 150 grams of cocoa powder.  In a saucepan mix the water, sugar, and dextrose or corn syrup.  Heat till the mixture reaches 85C (185F) and then add the cocoa and mix well with a whisk till emulsified, pour into a bowl and allow to cool. This makes a lot so you can freeze the rest for other things).

Vanilla and orange essence and/or aroma panettone to taste (I used a tsp of vanilla and a tsp of aroma)

To the first dough add the flour, then the sugar, the egg yolks, the chocolate paste, the butter, the salt, the flavorings, and finally add the chocolate pieces, making sure to knead well after each addition to maintain an elastic dough.  Again, I just made sure I had good gluten development and that the dough passed the windowpane test.  This is a VERY fluid dough. Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes at 28C. Round the dough as best you can and place the dough into the mold for 1 kg panettone (this would be the large-sized mold, approximately 6” from King Arthur Flour) and allow to rise at 28C  for 6-8 hours until the center of the dough is even or nearly even with the top of the mold.  Bake at 180C (356F) for 50 minutes.  Cool upside down for at least 12 hours. At this point, the panettone can be wrapped well in aluminum foil and plastic wrap and allowed to age and the flavors to blend for a few days or you can just eat it, which is what I did :)