Il Panettone: la ricetta milanese originale della Pasticceria Besuschio dal 1845

Good morning, welcome back to Abbiategrasso! I'm Andrea Besuschio. I'm Giacomo Besuschio.

We're inviting you in the historical business of the Besuschio family and we're presenting you with the Milanese panettone, the prince of panettoni. First thing, we'll start by speaking about the starter, which is the key element of this product. This is our starter, and it has been refreshed three times so as to have it ready and start the dough.

We're not talking about the recipe for it today because we talked about it in the recipe for pandoro that we made about one year ago. Its features are: it is refreshed one by one. What does it mean?

One kg of yeast for one kg of flour and the hydration varies between 47 and 48%. We're now moving to the stand mixer with the flour to start kneading. We're adding the water, we're adding the yeast.

The time has come to add an ingredient that is very important in our leavened products, which is sugar. In this case, we're using a sugar that is fine sugar from the Infundo line. Why are we using this sugar?

It's a very fine sugar and this makes the absorbtion process faster for the dough, so we're not damaging the gluten net. We're adding half of the egg yolk and starting to knead in our twin-arm dough mixer. This first kneading phase will last about 15 minutes.

We'll start on the first speed, obviously, so we don't distribute the dough all over the laboratory, then we'll increase the speed until we obtain a perfect gluten net. The gluten net formed. We can add the last two ingredients, meaning the second part of the yolks and we're finishing it with butter.

We're kneading for about 5 minutes, the time for the dough to absorb the last two ingredients. Here we are, we can remove it from the machine. I'm taking some of the dough, 500 g of dough, to have our tester.

The tester is a pointer to the growth of the dough, so when it will be three times its actual volume, it means we will be ready to make the second dough. Good, we're ready to move it to the rising cell to rest it at 27°C until tomorrow morning. It's about 12 hours.

Before we allow the dough to rise, we always have to cover it with film, or a cloth, so that a layer on top doesn't create due to oxidation. See you tomorrow morning! Finally 12 hours have passed for the rising, after we placed it in the cell yesterday evening.

So, I'd say we can proceed with the second dough, what do you say, dad? Great. Yesterday we added 500 gr and during the night it tripled in volume, we reached 1500, so we know that our dough grew the necessary volume.

We can start the kneading. We're adding it into the twin-arm dough mixer. Let's start with the flour.

The first phase of kneading lasts about 15 minutes, so once we add the flour, we're starting with 2 minutes on the first speed and 13 on the second. This creates the gluten net and allows us to start our second dough. Meanwhile, I'm preparing the aromas, so I'm carving the vanilla pods and adding them to give aroma to our sugar, then I'm laying them, cutting them opening them and with the back of our knife we're creating a slight pressure to allow all of our pods to open.

Our 15 minutes of kneading passed, we created the gluten net in the dough and the time has come to add the sugar, always fine sugar from the Infundo line. At this point, we're kneading it for 2 minutes on the first speed. After the sugar and vanilla, we're adding honey and aromatic paste, meaning the orange paste.

As you can see, we're adding all of the ingredients little by little, so that we're not spoiling the dough, to obtain later a final product that is at the top of its performance. We can start the kneading in this case on second speed. We can then proceed for 4 minutes before we can add the other ingredients.

From the noise, you can already understand the point of kneading, so the clacking you hear inside the kneading machine is synonym with a good dough. Before we add salt, I'm always checking the structure of the gluten net, because the sugar needs to be well absorbed by the dough. We can add salt at this point.

Salt is useful to tighten the gluten net of the dough. We're mixing it for two more minutes, always at the maximum speed, then we're adding the last ingredients. We're proceeding with the last phases of the kneading by obviously adding the yolk.

The yolk needs to be added gradually, so it can help create a good mixture, preventing the product from splitting. The last ingredient before candied fruits is butter. I always prefer to keep it at room temperature overnight so I can obtain the right consistency so that the dough can absorb it in the least possible time.

We're kneading it for 4 minutes, so that the dough can absorb the butter, then we're adding the candied fruits. The panettone is made of three key elements: orange cubes, of course it needs to be a high quality orange cut 9x9 so it will be quite hard on the outer side, meaning the peel, but the white part is very creamy and soft, so at the bite we'll have two very pleasant consistencies. We have the raisins, which has to be a good grape.

Historically, a Turkish grape was always used. Currently there's bakers and pastry chefs who use Australian grapes as well, that can have a slightly bigger format, but Turkish grape has a key element, in my opinion, meaning this caramel aroma. The citron is no less, ours is a Diamante citron from Calabria.

When it comes to aroma, it also adds a very interesting taste. We're now adding our candied fruits mix and we're starting our machine again. It'll knead for 4 minutes on the first speed to incorporate our fruits well.

The dough is done, the time has come to take it out of the machine. The dough rested for 20 minutes at room temperature and the time has come to break it into the various desired shapes. In this case, we're making one kg panettoni, so we're weighing one kg and 100 gr, as 10% of the dough is lost during baking.

Ours still remains an artisanal business. This preparation reminds me of all the days spent with my father and other people with whom I had the chance to interact. At this point, we're allowing our pats to rest in the air for 20 minutes.

Good. After 20 minutes, we can start rounding them. The aim of rounding is to give strength to our dough and obviously make our pat round.

We're doing this in two times, since the first phase is a building phase and the second is a structure building phase instead. Why? Because it concentrates the strength of our panettone towards the center indeed, and this will allow for a growth of the panettone upwards.

At this point, we placed them in our rising cell and they'll rest for about 6 hours at 30°C. Obviously, we're still going to check them. 6 hours have passed, the rising is done.

We can take our panettoni out. We're resting the panettoni for about 10 minutes on the table at room temperature so as to create a skin on the surface of the product that can then help us with the cutting. Since my hands are shakey because of the age, I'd rather let Giacomo cut, so we're in safer hands.

We're making the classic cross-cut and we're also placing a knob of butter. Here is a nice cube of butter. And we're now entering the cathedral.

This oven has two floors, it's two layers almost the same size and obviously we have two different temperatures. This is the second level of the oven, which is dedicated to the heavier weights, from 1. 5 kg to 3 kg to 5 kg, since we have a temperature that is slightly lower, since the cooking times for these heavier weights are much longer, so there's the chance they get too dark on the upper side.

It stays on every day, so we always need to fuel it. It was created as a wood oven and it is currently working with gas. The oven at its maximum capacity can contain 120 panettoni of the size of 1 kg.

The cooking for a 1 kg panettone is about one hour, and the temperature varies between 180 and 175°C. We're starting at 175-180°C, we're managing the temperature, but we're cooking with the oven off, so the baking becomes much softer and much more delicate. Another important anecdote is how at the beginning there weren't these beautiful panettoni papers or ramekins, so the panettoni were tied with straw paper and with a twine.

Sometimes they untied, so we couldn't sell them, and thanks to a family friend on my grandpa side who owned a paper factory, the first ramekins for panettoni were created, and it was the case these ramekins were tested for the first time in the early 50s inside this oven together with great pastry chefs such as honorables Motta and Alemagna and my grandfather Giulio. After one hour, let's see whether our panettoni is ready to be taken out of the oven. When we take the panettoni out, we're always making sure that the core temperature of the product is around 95°C so we can be sure it is cooked.

We're ready to take the panettoni out. We're using these frameworks so that the panettone stays hanging for the whole night upside down and releases the inside moisture without collapsing inside the ramekin. We are now at the final part so we're cutting our panettone and after it rested for one night upside down, we'll see if we worked well.

The air pockets will be elongated, perfect, so. . .

it's up to you! Try and cut it and let's see! I would say it's a good product.

The aroma is vanilla and honey, the softness is right, all that is left is to taste it! What do you say? It's baked right because it's not mushy, the aroma of the butter is present, the vanilla rounds the edges.

This is the typical Milanese panettone. There's currently many variants: the chocolate one, the pistachio one, with other ingredients. But tradition truly speaks about delicate, pungent, embracing aromas that are indeed given by these ingredients.

They're given by orange, raisins and citron, and the vanilla, that was not added, anyways, until the early 900s, and it helped giving an even greater pleasantness to the product. We invited you in our laboratory, you came in to discover some of our magics. We enclosed in a few minutes video the whole history of panettone and the history of our family and we also hope this video can inspire you to understand the technique behind the panettone and its making.

What more can I tell you? Come and visit us in this small town on the banks of Ticino, where you'll find much taste and much pleasure! Greetings to all friends of Italia Squisita by Andrea and Giacomo Besuschio.

See you next time!