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Christmas Dessert
episode • The Cook Up with Adam Liaw • cooking • 24m
G
episode • The Cook Up with Adam Liaw • cooking • 24m
G
Six. Eight. Twelve. I counted the number of beautifully packaged, tall dome-shaped boxes stacked in the corner at my grandmother's house. Inside, each box contained a towering, sweet cake-like bread. Same thing at my parents place. Stored in their second kitchen is a leaning tower of panettone akin to a display at the end of a supermarket aisle. It's November, and they're ready to gift this culinary delicacy come Christmas time.
Italians have loved this dessert from Milan for centuries. It's typically made from butter, milk, eggs and dried fruit and is often eaten over Christmas and New Year. However, it's more than a symbol of Christmas – it's part of Italy's culinary culture.
It's the season for panettone. Source: PaRi Pasticceria
Panettone's history
Wheat was once considered a luxurious ingredient. During the 14th and 15th centuries in Milan, Christmas was celebrated with loaves of special wheat bread. In 1395, it was imposed that all Milanese bakeries make pan de ton (bread of luxury) so that everyone could enjoy the sweetened wheat loaves for Christmas.
PANETTONE RECIPE
Panettone
There's also the story of Ughetto and Adalgisa, a young couple whose love was forbidden in part because of Adalgisa's family's failing bakery. Ughetto began working at the bakery where he baked a unique sweet bread that we now know as panettone. Call it the cake of love since not only was the sweet bread a success but the couple were subsequently allowed to marry.
Italian households are known to stock dozens of panettone. Source: Smith Street Books
It remained a Milanese speciality until the 20th century when pastry chef Angelo Motta helped raise panettone's profile beyond Italy's northern city. In 1919, Motta opened a bakery in Via della Chiusa in Milan and soon realised how to streamline the making of panettone. Soon enough, the flavour of panettone could be mass-produced. It travelled far and wide across the country and is now consumed worldwide.
I like the traditional panettone with the fruit as everyone likes to eat it.
While panettone is eaten over Christmas, the Milanese savour the panettone until 3 February, the Festa di San Biagio meaning the Feast of Saint Blaise. Many people eat a slice of saved panettone from Christmas time in honour of Saint Blaise, the patron saint of throat illnesses.
Panettone styles
Centuries on, variations of – including those which utilise leftover panettone – continue to flourish.
There are plenty of modern flavour fusions that add pizazz to the classic Christmas bread, such as or the gluttonouspanettone bread and butter pudding of Adam Liaw, the host of the eponymous The Cook Up With Adam Liaw.
CHRISTMAS ESSENTIAL
Panettone bread and butter pudding
However, some things never change.
When I asked my own grandmother, Giuseppina Mercadante, an Italian migrant from the southern city of Grassano, how she likes her panettone, she told me: "I like the traditional panettone with the fruit as everyone likes to eat it.
"When my friend invites me over for Christmas lunch, what do I have to bring? I bring a panettone."
Panettone really is the Christmas cake that keeps on giving (and re-gifting).
