Like a sun shiny beacon at the end of the long tunnel of winter, when oranges hit the store in force, it’s a good sign that spring is on its way.
With a fridge full of oranges from a bit of an over excited buying spree, I decided to transform your classic lemon-poppy seed muffins into a fruit-filled orange variation.
Just in time for the Holidays, Sarah from Mason Cupcakes challenges the Fresh From the Oven bakers to make Panettone, an Italian holiday sweet bread. Panetone’s one of those classic breads that has quite intimidated me, as much as I’ve wanted to give it a try, so I was glad for Sarah’s detailed directions and encouragement.
Sarah provided us with her foolproof recipe, but I was a bit too scared of the bread to risk messing up the conversions, so I went in search of a recipe in cups. Luckily King Arthur Flour has a nifty conversion tool for many of their recipes, and I found two that sounded good. One was “American Style” and did not require the special Panettone pan, but I still wanted to try a more traditional Panettone, so I cut each recipe in half, and tried them both.
The dough for the traditional Pannetone was more moist, but did not rise as well as the American Style, which, even though the dough was denser, had more yeast to carry the rise. Due to a better rise, I wasn’t too surprised when the American style ended up soft and springy, and the traditional Panettone ended up more dense and caky. As T put it, the difference between the two was like the difference between coffee cake and cinnamon swirl bread. They were both good, but quite different. And, since I’ve never had Pannetone before, I’m not entirely sure if the bread was supposed to turn out more like one or the other.
