Recipe for the Perfect Traditional Italian Panettone

Is it Hard to Make Panettone?

While panettone is a labour of love, requiring patience and precision, it's a rewarding endeavour. The multiple rises can seem daunting, but each step is crucial to achieving that perfect light texture..

Our Italian friend and chef Valentina Harris told us recently that she only knows one Italian person who attempts making her own panettone each year... And the process includes draft-proofing her kitchen by blocking up all the windows and doors with eiderdown!

What Flour Should You Use for Panettone?

Flour makes all the difference in panettone. To achieve its cloud-like texture, you need a strong, high-protein flour.

Italian bakers often choose Manitoba flour, prized for its strength and elasticity.

If you can’t find Manitoba, use a strong bread flour or Italian 00 flour with at least 13–14% protein. This higher gluten content allows the dough to stretch without collapsing, supporting the long fermentation and generous enrichments of butter, eggs, and sugar.

Troubleshooting Panettone Dough

• Dense texture? Check your flour strength – it needs to be high protein. Similarly kneading time, as well as giving it enough time to rise.

• Dough collapsing? It may have over-proofed. Watch carefully during the final rise.

• Not enough flavour? Try a longer, slower rise (an overnight prove in the fridge develops complexity).

How to make panettone, our pick of expert guides:

Traditional panettone recipes

• We're big fans of WordLoaf for all things bread, and here they discuss some key lessons from their panettone jourey. 
• This recipe for traditional panettone from Andrea Tortora, on the Great British Chefs website takes two days, and includes the traditional Italian resting and proving times. It should give you a light and aerated dough, that tears into strips like mozzarella cheese.

Quick panettone recipes

• Many bakers opt for a quick panettone recipe - more similar to a cake in texture. Try this recipe by Dan Lepard for soft, rich quick panettone. With a golden dough and loose crumb. 
• Or the BBC Food recipe for panettone enriched with butter, Marsala wine and soaked fruits. But ready in just one afternoon, rather than several days!
• Baker Richard Bertinet talks through a step-by-step panettone recipe here, with helpful images of the exact dough texture to aim for. His recipe is another ‘quick’ version with a combined hands-on and cooking time of just 1hr 35.
• Anna Glover’s panettone recipe in olive magazine also uses fast-action yeast, in order to reduce the traditional 72-hour proving time. This recipe is topped with flaked almonds and golden caster sugar for extra crunch.
• Mary Norwak’s recipe for the Women’s Institute in 1984 is brilliantly succinct.
• While the Weekend Bakery recipe is extremely detailed, and also explains how to hang the panettone upside down using skewers as it cools. To achieve the optimum rise! 

How to make panettone at home using a dough hook

1. To make panettone, combine sourdough starter with yeast, milk and sugar; then add butter and eggs to create the enriched base.

2. Combine this wet mix with flour to make a kneadable dough. Leave for the first prove – crucial for developing those rich and complex flavours.

3. Once the dough has doubled in size, knock it back and incorporate soaked dried fruit, orange zest, or chocolate chips. Shape and leave to prove for a second time – which will now dictate the shape and texture of your dough.

4. Place the dough into panettone cases for proper rising and shaping. Before baking, sprinkle pearl sugar on top of the dough.

5. Once your panettone has risen and looks suitably majestic, put it in the oven.

6. After baking, allow the panettone to cool completely on a wire rack.

7. Finally, while your panettone cools you should hang it upside down to preserve that perfect rise you’ve achieved, and prevent any sagging!

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For more panettone expertise, take a look at our feature on how to find the best panettone. Or browse our selection of the luxury Italian panettone.