Results of my first round of Colomba testing.
I think that results were satisfactory, but I learned several things:
1. Recipe: Colomba is not the same as panettone. I used my current panettone recipe, and the results were almost too soft and airy; Colomba is a long, flat cake, and so it needs a bit of structural integrity to be physically stable. Make sure your recipe isn't extreme in any direction.
I've done 25 panettone bakes this year, according to my records! How the time, and panettone, flies. Looking back on the year, I've studied, taken classes, tried numerous techniques affecting each stage of product. There have been successes and a few (thankfully) failures, bright ideas and "Oops" moments.
With Callebaut Gold and white chocolate.
This is the highest-rise panettone I've baked yet, due in part to some changes in the way I'm maintaining the lievito madre, and some alterations I'm making to the recipe to improve the first impasto.
The crumb is soft, moist, lofty, shreddable. There is no trace of acidity, or of toughness, dryness or other common problems. The flavor comes from 1. mellow complexity from the 12-hour rise on first impasto (which tripled in exactly 12 hours at 22-24C), the Vanilla, toffee, pecans, and chocolate.
This panettone is a pleasing combination of vanilla, caramel and nut flavors, enhanced with bright fruit notes.
Baking panettone is challenging, and can be discouraging, but persistence pays off at breakfast time!
Base recipe is the Mirko Iannarelli formula 72-28%
This batch of caramel apple penettone is the most successful to date - 18 cm high, 1000g exactly. This is the Roy recipe, which is a lower egg yolk formula. My lievito madre has been out of storage for about two weeks.
For the first week, I fed the LM only once a day at 1:1:.40, keeping it at room temp for 12 hours and refrigerated for 12 hours. I found that this had the tendency to increase acidity very slowly, moving me toward target.
Every time I bake panettone, I try to build on what has worked, what I've learned, and new things I want to try out.
This bake is caramel apple; the result is very satisfying: moist, delicate, shreddable, flavored with spices, caramel bits and apple. No off-flavors or acidity.
Panettone can be made is a wide variety of flavors, not just the classic raisins and candied orange peel. In this case, I used apple chunks, caramel bits, and cider donut spices, which combine beautifully with the light buttery and fermentation notes of the panettone.
Still working away at my panettone here in the VT wilderness. I've adopted a consistent twice-daily feeding process for my Lievito Madre, and have made other adjustments in dough handling, pH measurements, proofing temperature, and baking process.
I am now seeing significantly more alveolation in the loaves, so apparently all of these things are contributing factors.
This is the Candied Strawberry Chocolate Caramel panettone. Here is a side-by-side with my bake of two weeks ago, the new bake is the top row:
Adapted from Schvartzapel's recipe in Chambelland.
I've added candied strawberries, Valrhona caramel chocolate, and caramel chunks,
Red, White and almost Blue!
Really a delicious combination, and a pretty satisfying bake. The white chocolate chips mostly melt into the crumb, give an overall cocoa-buttery richness that goes well with the cherries. I guessed at amounts, next time will double the add-ins.
