Tuesday, December 22, 2009

My Panettone success

One very widespread Brazilian Christmas tradition is the giving and eating of sweet Panettone bread. How a traditional Italian bread has come to be so ubiquitous here in Brazil remains a mystery to me. I'm sure there is some ancient Portuguese connection somewhere. (If you can school me, comments welcome.)

These days - enter a grocery store and you will have to press past the Panettone display tower to get to everything else. Every bakery worth its reputation has their own Panettone recipe. In general the fruity versions win out in popularity, but as you might imagine a newer chocolate chip version has emerged.

I'm proud to say that I have discovered (thank you Google) a perfect-every-time Panettone recipe for my bread machine. Given the tradition in place, this easy and delicious recipe has solved a lot of "what should we give them?" dilemmas.

My personal changes to the linked recipe include: use milk instead of water; use butter instead of vegetable oil; add a quarter cup of raisins. Be sure the dough is quite wet. And if you live in Brazil - search - SEARCH - for the almond extract. It makes a big difference.

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