Giorilli Panettone - my first sourdough panettone

I have attempted baking panettone in the past with limited success. Out of three times, two were successful and with one the dough failed and turned into a cake batter. Two recipes that were successful, one was with commercial yeast and one with combo of commercial yeast and 100% hydration liquid starter.

Early November last year I decided to learn how to develop Lievito Madre stiff starter in order to bake a "real" panettone. I read as much as I could find on the subject including many recipes and discussions from this site, especially Michael W., joegranz, SueVT and any others I could find. I want to thank Michael and Joe for their gracious comments and advises they have given to me.

By the end of December I developed a decent stiff starter, meaning it was tripling by volume, the only measuring stick I had at the time. Shortly after I purchased a pH probe which helped tremendously in making some sense of what I was doing. At the same time I learned that developing LM is as much art as it is science. Different bakers applied different methods (sometimes even contradictory) to obtain the same excellent results. Everybody seamed to experience their fair share of failures, panettone baking is no joke!

What stuck with me the most was an Italian forum where one of the bakers in lively discussions presented his way of handling LM. The idea was simple: maintain dry LM with morning bagnetto followed with 1-2 refreshments followed with hot treatment @ 27-28 C and then 16-20 hr cold treatment at 16-17 C. The refreshment ratios are menaged based on pH reading at the end of each treatment. Fore example the first refreshment is 1:2:0.44. That is providing the pH is 3.8-3.9. If pH is higher then reduce the flour to maybe 1:1.8:0.44 (the value depends on how much is pH higher or lower then expected). The second refreshment is generally 1:1:0.44 but again flour ratio is adjusted depending on pH reading obtained at the end of the previous 4 hr cycle. At this point LM is either used to make the first dough or is refreshed 1:1:0.44 (again adjustable ratio depending on the last pH reading), wrapped and stored at 16-17C for 16-20 hrs.

I guess the basic premise is trying to manipulate LM feeding ratios in order to hit the targeted pH after each consecutive refreshment and all of that while maintaining strong LM leavening power with the dough tripling by volume in 3.5-4 hours. The last refreshment was targeted to hit pH 4.1 before making the first panettone dough or wrapping and storing overnight.

This is the strategy that I adopted myself and the only change I made is that I wrap the LM during the cool overnight treatment as oppose to just keeping it in a covered container.

After about a month of daily refreshment routine I felt I was getting a bit stuck not knowing what to do next. It felt as if I started running in circles. From what I learned I was getting some reasonably good pH readings and LM was for sure very lively and active. Shortly after, during the discussion exchange with JoeG. and his suggestion that I should try to bake with LM I developed and that way asses its quality I did just that: I baked the Giolli's recipe panettone. 

The flour I used was Boreal Organic Flour made by LA MEUNERIE MILANAISE INC. with 13.33% protein content.

It could be beginners luck (likely it is) but nevertheless it turned out great! It is beautifully fragrant, tender and tasty. Quite happy with my first sour dough based panettone!

This was my schedule:

9:30 am pH 4.17      1:1.5:0.40

1:30 pm pH 4.33      1:0.5:0.44  

5:00 pm pH 4.21.     1:0.8:0.44   

9:00 pm pH 4.18

I used my Ankarsrum mixer to mix the first dough in about 42 minutes. Everything went smooth, developed a good window pane. The only issue was incorporating the sugar into fairly dry first dough. I think that sugar drew water out of the dough which then with partially dissolved sugar coated the bottom of the bowl. The bowl side scraper didn't like that sticky coat and started binding and making screeching noise.  I think next time I will do sugar addition by hand. The pH of the first dough was 5.64.

The dough was kept at 24C overnight and it tripled in about 13 hours.  The pH was 4.18. Now this was waaaay off from what I read on these pages were it suppose to be about 5!? Scary...nah, "what you don't know can't hurt you":). Life is an adventure so I decided to continue and see what happens.

The second dough was a breeze to make. It gobbled up egg yolks and butter effortlessly and developed a good window pane. I was done in about 30 minutes but got concerned since the recipe called for 40-45 min. so I mixed another 5-8 minutes.

The only issue I had was during incorporating the eggs I noticed the dough temperature to be high (28C). I stopped the process and cooled the dough off in the fridge for 20-25 minutes to 22 C. The rest of egg yolk addition, butter, fruit and nuts went in without trouble. 

Next was 30 min dough rest, followed with dividing and 20 min rest, shaping and putting the dough in the molds. I think my final dough shaping can be much improved, but that is the story for another day.

The dough grew to about 1" from the mold edge in about 9 hours at 28C. It did not have pronounced dome shape which I blame on my sloppy shaping technique.

I baked two 750g panettone loaves at 350 F for 45 minutes.

The following are some of photos I took along the way:

First dough:

Second dough:

The big hole on the right was from the metal skewer that in panic I inserted too high from the bottom: