In case you haven’t tried it, panettone is a light, fluffy, sweet bread traditionally eaten over Christmas and New Year in Italy (and abroad – many people love the taste and texture). It usually has a quintessential ‘cupola’ shape, but sometimes you find star-shaped panettone. Traditional additions to the bread are orange and lemon zest, and raisins – and chocolate chips are popular internationally. It’s usually served with a hot drink such as coffee or hot chocolate (for a sumptuous recipe, see here), or a liqueur like amaretto.

The sweet bread dates back to Roman times, when it was made with honey, but the modern version was first created in Milan. The origin of the name ‘panettone’ is somewhat up for debate:

• It comes from the Italian word panetto, meaning a small loaf cake (adding ‘one’ at the end charges the meaning to large, so ‘the small large loaf cake’!).
• It means ‘bread of Toni’ (pan de Toni) and is named for either Toni, the daughter of a poor baker, or Toni, a kitchen boy who invented the cake, or a Friar Toni, whose ecclesiastical hat inspired the shape.
• It comes from the Milanese phrase pan del ton, which translates to ‘cake of luxury’.

There are all sorts of panettone recipes. I follow a fairly simple one. The secret to its success is patience: the dough needs to be left to rise several times.

Ingredients

1.2kg plain flour

1 tablespoon salt

40g dried yeast

350 ml whole milk

6 whole eggs

6 egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

250g caster sugar

500g unsalted butter, softened

250g raisins

250g sultanas

Grated zest of 1 orange

Grated zest of 1 lemon

100g candied orange and lemon peel, finely chopped

2 tablespoons icing sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
2. Combine the flour, salt, yeast, milk and whole eggs and knead on a floured surface for ten minutes.
3. Sprinkle with flour, cover and leave to rise in a warm place for half an hour.
4. Mix in the egg yolks, vanilla essence and sugar, and then the butter. Beat – ideally in a mixer – for five minutes until you have a smooth, stretchy dough.
5. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave to rise in a warm place for one to two hours until it has doubled in size.
6. Knead in the peel, zest, raisins and sultanas and form into a ball shape.
7. Place in a greased cake tin (or panettone tin), with greaseproof paper protruding around the sides.
8. Leave to prove again, until the cake has risen over the top of the tin.
9. Brush with beaten egg, and bake in the oven for 35 to 50 minutes until golden and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
10. Cool for ten minutes, turn out onto a cooling rack and dust with icing sugar.
11. Enjoy!