Remember 28ºC

This detailed professional guide to the creation of panettone is written by a Spanish pastry chef credited with a revival of interest in the holiday bread in his native country.

An instructor at the Escuela de Pastelería del Gremio in Barcelona and organizer of a national panettone competition in Spain, Jose Romero has developed a method for producing panettone which emphasizes temperature control, hence this book’s title.

Beginning with a survey of important ingredients–including determining whether a flour has the proper qualities for the best panettone–Romero proceeds to examine useful equipment, including molds and packaging material for retail sale.

He then embarks on the development of the crucial sourdough starter, which he then shows can be kept in its liquid state for later use, activated for immediate use, or dried for use in supplementing flavor or later revival.

Each additional step in the nurturing of the panettone dough is amply illustrated with step-by-step photographs before Romero shares fourteen different recipes, each of them carefully calibrated for the use of diverse ingredient inclusions. These include variations on panettone which are commonly served at other holidays, such as columba for Easter, as well as pandoro, a Christmas variant from Verona which has no inclusions and a higher fat content.

Among the recipes:

• A classic unglazed panettone with raisins and candied citrus peel
• Pistachio and semi-candied cherry panettone with pistachio glaze
• Walnut and apricot panettone with wholemeal flour
• Hazelnut and chocolate columba
• Lemon pandoro

There are supplemental recipes for other glazes as well as candying fruit. A brief trouble-shooting section helps identify common production errors, from lack of proper hydration to finished products which dry out quickly.

An impressively detailed resource.

Bilingual in Spanish and English. Hardcover. Color photographs throughout.