New Season New Panettone!

It’s a new season and time to see if I can build off last year’s bakes.

My first bake was “Ok” but not quite what I desired. My second bake (pictured above) was much better. I attribute that to my being patient and following my notes and having my Pasta Madre more active.

I attempted to make another bake but make four 500g loaves rather than two 1kg loaves.

They didn’t turn out well. Limited bloom and dry.

I’m thinking the 500g loaves would make good gifts so I’m going to need to figure this out

Hypothesis: Pasta Madre wasn’t on point

Going to focus on my Pasta Madre Refreshment/Activation

Fortunately, I bought a book on making Panettone to help me. Remember 28°C by Jose Romero has a wealth of information to reference.

The title refers to the ideal dough temperature (IDT) needed when making proving Panettone. It’s also the IDT for fermentation of Pasta Madre.

I’ve learned the reason for binding Pasta Madre in cling wrap / linen to limit exposure to oxygen and shape the fermentation.

Refreshing involves putting it in a bath first…. This bath brings it to temp and helps add oxygen. Add 5g of sugar to one liter of water to help with oxygenation. The ends of the Pasta Madre are cut off and it is then sliced into roughly 5cm slices.

The (filtered) water was heated to 50°C since my Pasta Madre was 6°C coming from my fridge. Essentially, two items, want an IDT of 28°C … 2×28=56. Gallery below shows my process…

After the water bath I trimmed the outside skin, weighed and refreshed at 1:1:.42 ratio. That’s one part each of starter, bread flour and 42% water. This was all mixed again trying to be mindful of IDT.