Sourdough Pandoro

“Pandoro” is a beautiful golden colour, star-shaped bread dusted with powdered sugar. That gorgeous colour is what lent the bread its name -  “pan d’oro” meaning “golden bread”.

 

While Christmas is all about the cake and the pudding, the run up to Christmas, and New Years for me its all about Pandoro. Looks like I am not the only one that feels that way, as around 117 million breads sell every year in the run up to Christmas !!

 

You can buy Pandoro in many shops around the world, but nothing beats the one you make yourself …

So, lets get on with the recipe - this recipe makes two Pandoro (or is it Pandori?)

A couple of notes before you begin :

FLOUR : if you can, use an artisan Italian flour – a fine white 00 flour with a very low white content. I use Shipton Mill Italian Flour as it really does make a difference to the texture of the bread.

MOULDS : I use 1kg Pandoro bread moulds, you can buy them from many online retails, I got mine from BakeryBits. If you don’t have a Pandoro mould, use any tin with really tall sides, such as a high bundt tin or angel cake pan, or even a paper panettone mould.

MIXER : you won’t need to use a mixer until the very last stage (Stage IV – Final Dough), when I would highly recommend using a mixer, as you will be enriching the dough and developing gluten. I have a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer that I use with a dough hook.

MAKES 2 BREADS : I split by dough into two at the end of Stage III (Second dough) and left one half in the fridge for 2 days as I only have one Pandoro mould and didn’t have time to prove and bake both. You could even put a half in the freezer for up to a month and bake it at a later stage. If you are doing the same, make sure that you bring the dough to room temperature before you move onto Stage IV (Final Dough).

The reason I do this, as otherwise the measures for starter and first and second dough will be a lot smaller and there is a lot more room for mistake and miss-calculation.

 

Stage I – Build a stiff starter

First of all you would need to build a stiff “sweet” starter. Use any existing starter or any hydration, preferably a white one, and build up the required volume and hydration that you need for this recipe. Its called a “sweet” starter not because you need to add any sugar to it, but because you are refreshing it at more frequent intervals, and not letting the starter to become acid, catch it at a stage when its “sweet”.

If I start with an active starter, it takes me 12 hours and two refreshes to build the required amount and texture

•     1 Tbsp starter + 30 ml water + 60 g flour. Mix together into a stiff ball of dough and leave for 6 hours
•      Add 50 ml water + 100 g flour to the starter, mix in a dough ball and leave for another 6 hours

Stage II – First Dough

•     195 g stiff starter
•     1 egg
•     68 ml water
•     38 g white sugar
•     180 g flour

Mix everything with a spoon in a large bowl, until its well combined. Cover and leave to prove at room temperature for 4-5 hours. Use your judgement to see how long it needs, depending how warm/cold your kitchen is. You should see the dough puffing up a bit, building small bubbles inside. You won’t see a huge increase in volume, just a softer, more pillowy dough.

Stage III – Second Dough

•     All of First Dough
•     1 egg
•     10 g unsalted butter (softened)
•     25 g white sugar
•     120 g flour

Add all the ingredients to the dough from stage 1 and mix everything well with a spoon.

Cover and leave to prove at room temperature for 4-5 hours. Again, you might need to reduce or increase proving time. At this stage, you are looking at about 30% increase in volume.

NOTE : at this stage, split the dough in two parts – use one part to make the final dough.

If you have multiple moulds, make two breads, otherwise you can put the other half in either the fridge or freezer to bake another Pandoro at a later stage.

 

Stage IV – Final Dough

•     HALF of the second dough
•     219 g flour
•     5g salt
•     10 g honey
•     3 eggs
•     106 g sugar
•     166 g unsalted butter (softened)
•     2 tsp good vanilla essence

Mixing this part of the dough is best done in a mixer for the most optimal gluten development.

Place flour, salt and honey in a standing mixer. Get half of the second dough (as per notes), and tear or cut it into pieces and add it to the mixer.

Mix eggs in a small bowl (no need for whisking, just mixed with a fork). Measure out sugar and butter in separate bowls.

Add half of the eggs and turn your mixer to speed 4 and run the mixer until all the ingredients well combined. You might have to stop and scrape the sides a couple of times to make sure that the second dough is mixing in well.

When all the ingredients have been mixed, start adding the rest of the egg and sugar, a bit at the time, taking turns – a bit of egg, a bit of sugar, and so on.

Once all the egg and sugar have been incorporated, start adding butter, a bit at the time, wait for each butter to mix in before adding the next one.

Keep the mixer running until gluten has reached full development and you can see the dough pulling away from the sides and bottom of the mixer bowl.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl, cover and to prove for two hours, do a stretch and fold after the first hour. 

Stage V – Prepare the mould

•     Soft butter
•     1 tsp caster sugar

Butter the mould very generously, making sure that the whole inside of the mould is covered in butter and there is no dry patches. Give the inside of the mould a very light dusting with caster sugar. Don’t be templated to use more than a teaspoon otherwise the sugar turns to caramel and will make your bread stick (trust me, it happened to me)

 

Stage VI – Final Prove

Once the dough finished proving, place it on the kitchen counter and shape into a tight ball. Place the ball into the prepared mould – smooth size down, seam side up.

Cover and prove at room temperature for 14 to 18 hours, until the dough comes up at the level of the mould. 

Stage VII – Bake

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan), place the baking tray on the lowest level and place a metal pan on the bottom of the oven (for steam).

When ready to bake, pour a ½ cup of water in the metal pan at the bottom of the oven to create steam.

Put Pandoro in and bake for 25 minutes, until rich and golden brown in colour.

Once baked, leave the bred in the moulds for 30 minutes before taking the bread out. Invert the bread and leave of a cooling rack until it cools completely.

Dust with icing sugar (if that how you like it) and enjoy.

You can slice it across, in star shares, or along in wedges.

I normally slice then across, place them under a grill for a couple of minutes and serve with strawberry jam