Roy’s Panettone
Maybe the best explanation for all of this is just that I have a very goal-oriented personality, and I go through phases of being obsessed with stuff. It’s also important to note that I don’t cook. I’ve got one good “America’s Test Kitchen” chocolate chip cookie recipe, but that’s pretty much it. My husband, Wayne, makes dinner every night. The other thing to understand is that I am the only non-Italian speaker in my house, that Panettone is a staple for us in the month of December, that we watch Spaghetti Westerns and listen to “Il Barbiere Di Siviglia” constantly. Marcello Mostroianni and Lucio Dalla and Battisti are all common household names for us. At least 50% of our books are in Italian including the stacks and stacks of children’s books. Wayne is, surprisingly, not Italian, but an Italian instructor. He speaks to our two toddlers in Italian 100% of the time. He served an LDS mission in Milan from 2001–2003, (and has since disaffected from the church) but I think if he’d served in a different country things would be the same in my house, just a different language. He’s a true humanitarian who believes in seeing outside your own culture to discover new paradigms. He was born to teach literature and film.
Panettone is an Italian Christmas bread in the brioche family. For most Americans who eat it, it’s a bit of an acquired thing because the commercial versions we buy at Sprouts and World Market taste quite a lot like fruit cake. My favorite commercial version trades the dried citrus bits and raisins in for chocolate chips. I’d never thought too much about it other than that.
Our neighbors invited us over for some panettone one Saturday afternoon this last December. They were hanging Christmas lights in their front yard and invited is in for a little slice. They explained that there’s this chef named Roy who only makes panettone and because we’re familiar with it, we should really try some. It was presented to us on little dessert plates in their living room. The crumb of the slice with the pearl sugar baked on top made me hesitate taking a first bite. Too beautiful to destroy. When I did take a bite I said, “Wow. This is what panettone is supposed to taste like.” Then all of the lightly sweet, stretchy, deliciousness was gone much too quickly. When I asked where I could get one, they explained that you had to order them online, that they’re $50 each, and that an additional $15 is the cheapest you’ll pay for shipping.
I went home and immediately put 2 different flavors in my digital shopping cart. Then I thought about how the money could go to charity (after all, it was Christmas), that we’d just replaced our furnace and needed to re-save all of that money again, that spending $100+ on a dessert is pretty indulgent. In the spirit of the Mormon-appropriated saying, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without!” I decided to bake a panettone. I never thought it’d come close to tasting like one of Roy’s Panettoni, but I just wanted one that didn’t taste quite so much like a Hostess cake. I found some paper panettone liners on amazon and tried to find a recipe that seemed like it might work.
