A beginner’s journey in making Panettone.

A few years ago, I started my journey into sourdough and “natural leavening”. Part was due to my love for all things timeless and traditional, and part was due to the natural course that my fermentation curiosity was taking.
I made “Pandoro” a couple of years ago (finally got to use the tin mould that I’d bought several years before then!) using a recipe which I converted from using a traditional “biga” starter (where you start a small amount of commercial yeast in a wet dough, leave it to ferment overnight, and then use the resulting living dough to start your bread), to using a sourdough.
The Pandoro was tasty – but a bit sour. And the longer it sat (the children were too young to help us eat an entire Pandoro in one go!), the more pronounced the sour tones became.

I’m not sure why I didn’t try making Panettone before this year – the process takes as long as making Pandoro … perhaps the descriptions that I’d read made it seem so much more involving. In any case, I decided to make one this year.

First attempt was a failure.
I used a recipe from a forum, but found that the gluten wouldn’t bind together in the way that the photos from the person posting showed, and in the end it ended up being more like a stiff cake dough rather than a bread.
It rose only a marginal amount – not the 7 or 8 times initial volume – and though it was super tasty, it wasn’t what it should have been.

A second attempt was made only after I had read dozens of Italian blogs and instructionals (thanks largely to Google’s web-page translator), and watched handfuls of videos (also in Italian, but I just muddled my way through those).
It was a SUCCESS!!

On the back of a success, I made three more over the space of two weeks.
Each was a failure! Two of the three attempts used the recipe/method which had been a success! Talk about frustration…

What were the symptoms?
Well, the first dough appeared to be perfect. It would finish smooth, stretchy, and glossy… and it would more-than triple over the 12-14 hour rest time.
But something was happening in the process of mixing the second dough.

By the end of the second dough, there was NO stretchiness. The dough had more of a “whipped” consistency – as you would expect from a very thick cake batter. As such, there was no way that it could be manipulated into any sort of ball. If you pulled at one side to stretch it over, it’d just separate.
The dough was glossy – but seemed completely void of any gluten strands.
I was mixing for over 30 minutes (which is a good guideline), so I refused to believe that I was undermixing. Only alternative seemed to be that I was overmixing. I had read about overkneading bread to the point that the gluten strands had broken down and wouldn’t hold together, so could only assume that this was my problem.

At the same time, I was trying to find a recipe for my mother, who makes baked goods without a stand mixer, but who wanted to try making Panettone. I had read that you needed a “special” recipe if you were going to try one without a stand mixer, and I finally found two videos in Italian where the ladies were using wooden spoons and hand mixers which had spiral dough hooks.
I tried one recipe.
Looked good after dough1. Rose as anticipated overnight.
Now – with my theory of overmixing in my head, I took GREAT care to not exceed the recommended timeframes.
I had re-read the instructions from elsewhere, and noted the recommendation to “reknead” the first dough before proceeding with the second.
I did.
It was looking promising, but the more ingredients that I added, the worse the dough looked. By the end, we were back to a thick batter rather than a stretch dough.
So I decided that when life hands you a miserable Panettone dough, you add a cup of flour, a tablespoon of baking powder, and turn it into PanettoneBiscotti. It worked beautifully. (Actually, I think that the moisture content of the raisins mean that long-term storage as biscotti would be impossible, but even left as loaves of bread (not sliced and double-baked as you would do with biscotti), it was a major save. The slices were super soft and spongy.)

But after attempt number 5, I went back to the “small-print” in the instructions for the successful attempt.
I recalled that mention had been made of a more detailed guide, so I fired up the Google Translate engine again to see if I could find an explanation.
And there it was, under the title “Stringing”.
I’ll paraphase:
To reach the stringiness of a well-formed gluten structure, you must be patient and go slowly with the insertions. The correct rope-like tendencies of a well-formed dough must be found at the start and not at the end of dough-making process (when it is too late). The more you go forward with a non-stranded dough the more you aggravate the situation.

THIS tied in with my visual observations: The further along I went, the worse the dough became.

So I started attempt number 6 (using the recipe designed for a hand mixer).
I went slower with the additions, and I used a lower setting (which meant that I had to scrape down the sides of the bowl more frequently).
But the process worked.
Oh – I ended up mixing dough2 for an additional 10 minutes – but this was probably due to the lower speed as much as anything.

Please feel free to refer to my step-by-step on making Panettone using a KitchenAid stand / planetary mixer, which includes times and speed settings.
I sincerely hope that my failures will result in your successes.