Panettone Trouble
I'm using Andrea Tortora's recipe, which I've used successfully for a handful of bakes over the years. Until recently, I wasn't familiar with lievito madre and so I typically just used a 100% sourdough starter when the recipe calls for fresh yeast. I've also only used King Arthur bread flour for this recipe.
When I learned about LM, I decided to make one and use it in the recipe. I've also started using King Arthur Lancelot flour since it is stronger than the bread flour I typically use. For the LM, I've been consuming everything I can find on this site related to panettone, LM, and mwilson. I also picked up a copy of Sourdough Panettone and Viennoiserie. I am all in, and my interest / obsession with panettone goes back way before I started baking maybe a decade ago.
Since making these 2 changes, I've had a very specific issue with my dough.
3 refreshes of the LM go well and triple in less than 4 hours. It tastes like apples without a hint of sourness, but I've never checked the ph or anything. First dough comes together nicely, though admittedly takes me well over an hour in my KA Professional. Windowpane on this dough is beautiful.
Dough bulk ferments at about 80 - 85 F for 10-12 hours. I start mixing the second dough after the first triples.
The second dough is where the issue is. Everything goes well up until I add the butter. Even the adding the butter goes well until I add the last bit of it, at which point the dough completely falls apart. No gluten to speak of. It's like cookie dough.
I realize it's probably over mixed. I've tried this recipe with LM and King Arthur Lancelot flour twice and both times had the same exact problem. I will say that the first time, I was very aggressive with my mixing speed and did not control the temp of the dough well. This time was different - I never went above 2 on my kitchen aid and I kept an ice pack against the bowl to keep the temp down,yet neither of these adjustments fixed my problem.
Failing at this is exhausting. I keep my LM in the fridge and begin strengthening it 3 days before making the first dough, with 3x refreshments per day and bound overnight storage at about 60 F. It's a long process to then fail right at the end!
Any ideas what the problem might be? The 3 changes are LM and a new flour. I'm guessing one of the two is the culprit.
Hi Joe
I hope an expert will be able to help you. In the meantime, I can relate something that might be similar.
I made kugelhopf 2 weeks in a row. It's a 2-stage (levain + enriched dough) brioche-style bread with fruit inclusions.
The first time, the enriched dough had quite a bit of sugar in it. I mixed that dough until gluten developed, then slowly added butter in a second phase. It worked fine. I combined with the commercial yeast levain and it baked up nicely.
The second time, I left the sugar out of the enriched dough. I again mixed it until guten developed it into a stiff dough. Then I slowly added a creamed sugar/butter mix to the dough and it competely dissolved into a paste. I was very sad as you probably were with yours. I put it in the fridge overnight and the next morning it was still pasty.
However, I plunged onward, mixing the commercial yeast levain with the paste and in 10 mins of HIGH SPEED VIGOROUS mixing with my KA pro, I had a lovely dough ball and it rose and baked up very nicely-- perhaps higher than the first one.
My hypothesis was that my change in the enriched dough (removing sugar from it) reduced its capacity to hold its form while absorbing butter fat. As you know, butter fat coats gluten, which is probably why it's added after the dough is formed.
So I think you are probably right in thinking that your shift in flour and LM has changed the capacity of your dough to take on the butter fat without breaking down. However, I was able to pull mine back together and have a great bake anyway.
I've actually been thinking about the ability of the dough to absorb butter, if such a concept exists, so interesting you mentioned it. The first time this happened, I cranked up the KA and ran it until my family was about ready to throw it out the window, and it didn't help, unfortunately.
As I said, I've been making my way through my "mwilson panettone" search results on this site and came across this post https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61599/need-help-my-panettone
If you look at the image of the first dough after adding butter, that's exactly what mine looked like. Furthermore, the picture of the crumb is likely what I would've gotten had I baked off my broken dough. Seems the feedback was that the first dough might have been overworked. I guess I could be working it so much that by the time I add the last bit of butter, the dough has had too much. I will say though, I'm a bit tripped up by the fact that the dough doesn't break down until the very last bit of butter is added (I add in about 1-2 tbsp increments depending on batch size), so I'm still wondering if it's related to the dough's ability to absorb butter.
I'm going to try working the first dough a bit less and see what happens.
I remember my early days of making panettone, the last stage of mixing was always fraught with trepidation. Thankfully I haven't felt that in a long time. Mixing is so much easier these days. I must be doing something right!
It could be overmixing... Usually this is obvious though. Sudden loss of elasticity, stickiness, very glossy appearance.
It could be degraded gluten. Check pH.
It could be the gluten is too tenacious and fails to envelope the butter and subsequently the dough breaks.
Nearly all problems with making panettone are to do with the influence of the LM. Too much acidity, particularly acetic will toughen gluten and cause it to not want to bind other ingredients.
Strong flour is good, but ideally the flour should have a balanced tenacity vs. extensibility i.e., P/L = approx. 0.55. Most North American bread wheat flours are considerably tenacious. How much of a problem this could be I'm not sure... But it's worth noting.
Thanks mwilson - I appreciate your feedback.
Regarding overmixing, I feel like when the dough breaks down, it has the quality of overmixed dough (if I understand correctly), but I'm still not convinced this is the issue. The dough will still cling to the dough hook a bit, but any attempt to stretch it results in the dough tearing with very little resistance. The butter also seems to pool on the dough and not fully incorporate. I'm just not sold on overmixing because the last time this happened, I kept the KA mixer on speed 2 and mixed each addition of butter just until the dough was smooth. Not more than a few minutes each time. After adding the last bit of butter, the dough never became smooth. I really tried to be a lot more gentle with it during my last attempt.
Regarding the degraded gluten, are there any other signs to look for in the absence of a pH meter? My LM was in the fridge for about 4 days. I took it out 2 days before making the first dough and refreshed it 3x per day with bound overnight storage. Before the first refreshment each day, I performed a bagnetto. This resulted in a total of 9 refreshments before making the first dough. The flavor of it did not seem sour or acidic - it mostly tasted like apples to me - granted I've never tasted a "healthy" LM so I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for.
I had a really rough time getting my LM strong enough to start baking with it. I converted my 100% sourdough starter to a stiff starter over a month ago, following a popular gumroad article I see mentioned in these forums sometimes (and which also has your name associated with it). This involved 4 hour submerged refreshment with a 16-20hr bound overnight storage. The thing would not triple, even in 6 hours, and tasted sort of metallic. After trying a bunch of different things, what finally worked was feeding a ratio of 1:0.8 starter:flour for a few refreshments. I noticed an immediate difference - the bound LM was tighter after the overnight storage and tasted like apples, with no hint of that metallic taste I had noticed until then. The LM started floating within 45 minutes into the submerged refreshment and was finally tripling.
So, the two times I used the LM to try and make panettone, I gave my LM a little boost. When refreshing to build strength for a bake, I no longer followed the gumroad article and adhered closer to the method found in the panettone book I mentioned. The freshments were done by balling up the dough and cutting a cross on top. I noticed that the cross was opening but not pushing up from the center, so over the course of the 9 refreshments leading up to the first dough, I performed one at 1:0.8 and two at 1:0.9 before returning to what seems like the standard 1:1.
All that is to say that I feel I am doing everything possible to control the pH, but without a pH meter it's hard to know for sure and I wanted to explain my process in case you see any obvious flaws that could lead to the degraded gluten.
Regarding flour that is too tenacious - what's the solution? Obviously a different flour, but would that mean the flour I'm using is unsuitable or could I just proceed with perhaps just adding slightly less butter to prevent the dough from breaking down?
I'm going to try this again in a few days and will take some pictures to hopefully shed a little more light on the problem. I appreciate the help in the absence of photos and videos, which I know would make the issue easier to diagnose.
Data point: My enriched dough pre butter was not only less material (sugar removed) but also most likely overmixed. Very tight. I left my mixer going while I worked on the butter/sugar/spice part that I later added.
I'm back with pictures this time around. The underlying theme of this bake was "there's no way this is going to work, but let's see what happens". So, there are a few errors here that I could've avoided had I not thought the bake was doomed from the start.
These two pictures show the last LM refresh before mixing the first dough. At this point, the LM had been out of the fridge for 2 days, had been washed twice, and refreshed a total of 6 times at various ratios (mostly 1:1, but I performed 2 refreshes at about 1:0.8 or 1:0.9 when the LM didn't rise as much as expected after a prior refreshment). Before and after to show growth:
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Here's the first dough after mixing. As you can see, the gluten is very developed at this stage.
The dough came together nicely when folded onto itself. If you look closely, you'll notice bubbles underneath the surface of the dough (which I understand to be a good sign), but there are slight tears near the edges. This is when I began thinking "oh no, here we go again...".
The second dough was, once again, a problem. It frustrates me so much that I seem to forget to take pictures of it haha.
When mixing the first dough with the flour for the second dough, it was already starting to break down. I was able to pull off chunks of dough without much resistance. I thought perhaps if the gluten was already damaged, I could add more flour and develop that gluten, hopefully giving the dough enough strength to get a passable final result. I wound up adding about twice the amount of flour the recipe called for.
Having had trouble with the second dough on my last two attempts, I didn't prepare any inclusions so as to not waste the ingredients if the dough didn't come together (didn't want to soak the fruit and end up not using it).
I also did not add all of the butter to the second dough. It didn't seem like the dough would accept that much butter, so left about 1/3 of it out. All said and done, I added twice the amount of flour, reduced the butter to 2/3 what the recipe called for, and added no inclusions. I left the dough to rest for an hour and lo and behold, I was able to get a windowpane. I had to manipulate the dough carefully so as not to tear it, but it was in significantly better shape than I had left it an hour earlier.
I shaped the dough and placed it in the panettone mold, confident that there was not enough gluten development for it to rise. Six hours later I was surprised to find this:
I thought it looked good and decided to bake it, knowing full well it would fall when hung upside down. No way there was enough strength in the dough to sustain hanging inverted for ~12 hours.
I was surprised, once again, to end up with this
There was a little blowout. My guess is that the dough was under-proofed and during baking, the glaze hardened and the dough had nowhere to go, so followed the path of least resistance and bulged out from under the glaze. If it is under-proofed, that could've definitely been avoided, but at some point I was just going through the motions expecting utter failure, not monitoring times and temps as closely as I should've.
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The crumb, of course, left a lot to be desired. It was soft and had that melt-in-the-mouth quality, but definitely cakier and tighter than I would've wanted
I feel like this is an improvement, but I don't feel great about it haha. I had to modify the recipe and even so, I'm surprised it baked as well as it did. I somehow feel like I understand even less at this point!
Edit: Sorry about the small images. First time posting pictures to the forum. I guess when I selected "preview" I expected that you'd be able to click on them to enlarge, but I guess not. If anyone is interested, I can upload larger images.
I'd be interested to see these pictures full-size. I might see something telling...
Some sort of success. A successful brioche maybe. At least this dough made it to the oven. The most frustrating part is that I've made this Andrea Tortora panettone a handful of times with my 100% sourdough starter with no issues (and far less of an understanding of how panettone is made than I have today). Makes you wonder why I'm doing this to myself, but I guess anyone who has gone down this road already knows the answer.
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Hi,
I just made the Giorilli panettone last night with pretty good results, well much better than some of the previous times. I used Caputo Sacorosso flour, which I bought just for this purpose. I do use Lancelot and All Trumps frequently for sourdough baking, but I've been learning a bit about the Italian/European way of measuring flour strength, and I haven't been confident in just using American flour, based on my previous experiences....
This time, I observed all timings on mixing, even though to me they are counterintuitive. The mix times are so long, that we would normally think that the gluten would be destroyed; however, it just got stronger and stronger. I think you should try another test with a flour that you know will work. If not, there's another issue.
Your Lievito Madre looks better than mine, that is where I need to put in more work. I coincidentally just ordered the book you mentioned, can't wait to read it. I also was looking at Bake Street blog, which has a great section on LM. My second rise took way too long, though my first rise was only over time limit by an hour.
More to learn here, but it's a great challenge.
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Thanks for the info. That's a nice-looking panettone!
I would love to use Italian flour, but I can't find a good source/distributor. I found a few (can't recall the websites), but the cost of shipping was more than the flour itself. We're talking $100+ for a 50lb bag of flour, after shipping. I settled on Lancelot because it's the highest protein flour I could find in a 50lb bag, which after ordering wound up being about the same price per lb as the 5lb bags of KA flour I get in the grocery store. Shipping was still kind of insane... If you have a good site for ordering flour, please let me know!
I tried making this recipe again last night and I broke my mixer lol. I saw a few videos of bakers mixing the first dough with the paddle and thought I'd give a shot - maybe it would mix the dough in a noticeably different way. I had added the water, sugar, and flour to the mixer and eventually, it got too tough, the paddle met too much resistance, and a few teeth broke off one of the gears.
I decided to proceed with mixing the dough by hand. I didn't have high hopes, but in the end, the dough came out great. Great windowpane, smooth, wasn't breaking. I didn't see any of the issues I had seen when mixing with my kitchen aid. I thought I had finally figured it out - it must have been overmixing.
It has been 15hrs since I finished mixing the first dough and it has not budged AT ALL. I've never in my life had a dough that just didn't rise at all. You'd think I forgot the starter (which I had refreshed for 3 days and was quite powerful by the time I used it). I'm chalking this one up to a bad mix but who knows... I will say, I left the mix to sit while I opened up the mixer to see what was going on, but I don't think that shoul've had this effect. I was monitoring the temp of the dough as I mixed by hand too. It did go up to about 29 C at one point, but again, I don't think that should've killed off all the yeast, for example. No idea...
Maybe I'll go back to KA bread flour and give it a shot since it has worked for me in the past. I had been making panettone fine with a 100% starter and KA bread flour. The more I learn the worse my panettone gets haha.
I know, I saw the $100 shipping for Pasini Panettone flour from one place in California and said No.... I would really love to use the Pasini flour, but can't get it unless wholesale.
I use General Mills All Trumps flour quite a bit, it is high gluten like Lancelot, and there is an organic version if you like... available from several places. Sometimes foodservicedirect.com has a free shipping weekend, good to watch for.
So sorry about your mixer, yes I can imagine the paddle breaking the gears under the strain. I have a couple of mixers so I have a backup, but they all struggle with the duration of mixing required for this dough. My experience has made me believe that my starter is most of the problem with rising, as it was probably not "sweet" enough, allowing too much acidity to build up in the dough. I have started over with a new LM, going to maintain it in water this time as I saw done on Bake Street blog.
For temperature, I have been seeing recommendations to stay under 25C for the first dough, then go up to 28C for the proofing in pans. Again, to reduce acidity in the dough.
However for me the thing that has made the biggest improvement is lots and lots of mixing. So much more mixing than I would have imagined. But every time I watch a video in a Panettone bakery, they are constantly mixing.
I'm intrigued by the All Trumps flour. Thanks for that!
I've made a few more attempts since my last update, the latest one with KA Bread Flour, which has worked for me in the past when using a 100% sourdough starter as opposed to lievito madre. All attempts failed the same way - which to me means it's either my LM or my mixing. Like I mentioned, I've made this successfully a bunch of times, but not often enough to be able to mix it consistently. I typically only made it around Christmas and there's no way I can remember what I did the year before. Perhaps I was doing something different in the past, but my guess is that it has something to do with my LM.
On that note, I'm not really sure how to diagnose my LM. It doesn't taste sour or acidic, rises well, and is maintained according to SPV (Sourdough Panettone and Viennoiserie). I'm more confident that my LM is healthy than I am that I'm mixing properly, but I guess without a pH meter and never having tasted a healthy LM, I can only say that based on my belief that my LM maintenance routine is on point.
SPV lists some mixing times, but all times are for twin arm mixers using "speed one" or "speed two". Not sure how those speeds translate to my Kitchen Aid, but I can tell you that it takes me at least double the mixing times listed in the book. For example, most recipes say that the first dough takes about 45 minutes to mix. For me, it was about 90 minutes of active mixing. It takes about 45 minutes alone to initially mix the flour, water, and sugar for the 1st dough before adding the eggs and butter. Maybe this is an indication that I'm doing something incorrectly, but the Kitchen Aid dough hook has a tendency to just hover above the dough and do nothing for large amounts of time. This isn't helped by the fact that I've only been attempting to mix enough dough for a single panettone. I'm sure the mixer would work better with a higher volume of dough, but I'm trying to minimize the waste here.
Not really sure how to proceed. Going to take a step back. I'll update here if I have any revelations, that way maybe someone can benefit from this information in the future. If anyone comes across this and has any ideas, I'm all ears.
I've been studying nonstop this past week, reading in Teffi-Chambelland, Massari's Cresci, mwilson's blog, Jimmy Griffin's Panettone book, and several blogs/youtubes..
A consistent theme is coming out - it should take around 15 days to establish a fully active LM if following a very consistent feeding and care regimen. I did not spend that long last time - I only spent around 5 days. I was rolling and submerging in water twice daily, and it was going pretty well. But I never had an LM that would triple in 3 hours. In fact, many of the aspects of its appearance were listed by mwilson as typical of underdeveloped LM.
I have ordered the Hanna bread and dough pH meter, which should be easier to use than the one I have for cheesemaking. I hope to measure pH at the start and finish of each feeding cycle. When I first saw spreadsheets with this kind of data, I thought it was overkill. However, with a few Panettone failures under my belt, the idea seems much more attractive.
I may use the vacuum sealer/binding technique for the overnight cycles. Probably I will continue to use water submerging for the other ones, because it is easier. I'll let the data dictate what I should do, and I won't attempt another Panettone before I am Sure the LM is right!
Another good recommendation - that pH meter is attractive given the price point vs others I've seen. Maybe I'll pick it up so that I can get a little more confident about the quality of my LM and 1st dough.
My guess right now is it's my mixing. Mixing for at least double the indicated time sounds like a great way to overmix the dough.
Just for fun, when my last batch started to break down after adding the butter, I just kept mixing since I knew it was going in the trash anyway. The dough just got worse until it was about the consistency of choux dough. I vaguely remember reading that an overly-acidic LM could lead to problems with butter absorption, but my LM really doesn't seem acidic. The pH meter should help nail that down, though.
I agree that it is difficult to mix a single panettone, as the dough often doesn't get caught by the dough hook. I have been mixing batches with 400g flour in the first, and 100g in the second, impastos. That will make 3 panettone of around 720g, depending on the recipe. Even then, I have to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl several times with a Norpro 99 spatula, particularly when adding butter, which tends to stick high up on the bowl sides.
I've seen a couple of videos in which the egg yolks and butter are pre-combined, to make it easier to add them. I haven't done this however.
I've been able to stay pretty close to the mixing timings, so I am just guessing about the overmixing issue though.
What kind of mixer do you typically use? It's actually really helpful to know that you are more or less hitting the times prescribed by the recipe - I've been taking them with a grain of salt, assuming they were more for commercial twin-arm mixers rather than my Kitchen Aid 600.
I've noticed in particular videos of Alfonso Pepe making panettone with an emulsion of eggs and butter. I suppose doing that might lead to less mixing. I have been meaning to try it...
Depending on the batch size, I use either my Kitchenaid K45 (4.5 qt) or my Cuisinart SM-70 (7 qt). Lately, with the batch size I am making, I mix the 1st impasto in the Kitchenaid, then move over to the Cuisinart for the 2nd impasto. It's not ideal, and I wish I had a different mixer for Panettone. The real spiral mixers seem to pick up the ingredients much better, at least that is how it looks on the videos.
The ultimate would be the Miss Baker - from Bernardi.. but its current won't work in America I believe. The Cuisinart is a strong machine, but the hinge lock is broken from an incident where it walked off the counter... I have to hold it down with a strap clamp.
Thanks for the info - I wanted to make sure you weren't using a twin-arm or spiral mixer when you said that you were close to the typical mixing times. I'm a little more hopeful now that my Kitchen Aid can get close to the times as well - something to work on.
The twin-arm and spiral mixers do look nice, but I can't justify the cost and the space they take up just for panettone. Maybe if I killed my Kitchen Aid but, while the KA's have their flaws, they're very repairable. As long as I can get parts this thing will live forever!
After reading this thread I am wondering if the super low hydration (not counting add-ins) just the four to water ratio is the only issue. I was just about to a weak windowpane and called the mixing. In my haste, I started to remove the dough without anding in the peal and raisins. I put the dough back and thought you know what a few more spins first. Well, the dough went from tight to a sloppy mess!
I was very proud of my 30+ hours from 100% hydration sourdough starter to stiff lievito Madra. This is eight hours before the first dough mixing. You guys have me thinking to quit on this a second time! Testing PH is beyond my skill set.
Just an FYI Will, but your LM pictured above is much too degraded. LM should be remain dough-like throughout.
That photo is just before the fourth feeding. Four hours after the third feeding. This is the dough sliced in half horizontally what you see is in the middle. I was sure this looked like good strong activity. Maybe I need to feed a higher ratio of flour to LM? Is Ms. Valintena Bria, really burning through her 1:1 feedings in four hours? I am going to give this another try in a few weeks. I need to be able to dedicate 48 hrs to the project. That reminds me both my liquid and stiff starters are due for a weekly refresh. Thanks for your observation. Does this information change your view at all?
I posted some pictures here of what a good LM looks like...
Usually when establishing a LM, with successive refreshments you should notice the consistency become more dough like.
I think the commonplace malting of US flours is probably one factor that might be working against you and others in NA.
Thanks, for lending your expertise. I found this statement interesting. mwilson: "Usually when establishing a L.M, with successive refreshments you should notice the consistency become more dough-like." My next refresh was dough build #1. When I was dividing the L.M. I noticed the dough was much less lacey (degraded) Which had me concerned. We will see, I have to throw out the results of that second bake because of the mistake I made in the procedure. Not to disregard your observations, I get the gut feeling my L.M. is close to being on target. (Which reminds me I still have not done a weekly refresh!)
This is how Valentina looked after her bath just before her fourth refresh.
Will, as you know, most Caputo flours are unmalted (except for the Pizza Americana, and Pizza a Metro flours.)
That place you go to that sells re-packs might have smaller (than 55 lb) bags of Caputo flour for your LM.
Then I remembered that General Mills (Gold Medal) also makes some unmalted pizza flour, 12% protein. One comes in a 50 pound bag, and one comes in a 27.55 pound (12.5 kg) bag. https://www.generalmillscf.com/products/category/flour/premium-pizzeria-flour-27-5-lb
That 27 pounder, being American made, will likely be cheaper per pound than the imported Caputo. And you might be able to use the whole bag if you make a few pizzas with it, along with using it for the LM. (Thereby not having to pay a higher per-pound price of a re-pack.)
Though you might have to add some diastatic malt back in for pizzas, so they brown in your home oven.
Just some thoughts.
I can definitely get unmalted flour from Sansone. I'll see what options they have for me on my next run. Right now I am leaning to a small bag of Caputo.
Watching this, for me is reminiscing on how felt about panettone back then, ah the wonder!
Between then and now I have actually visited the Rullli Emporium, didn't get a chance to try his panettone, after all it was the height of summer..! Yet I did try my favourite ice-cream, pistachio!
I hope this little vid can inspire those on the panettone journey!
Another attempt in the books. Another failure, but moving along the right path I think.
I got my first dough mixing time down from about 2 hours (not actively mixing for that long, but almost...) to about 45 minutes. I noticed a significant improvement here. Typically when I fold the dough over and shape it before placing it in a container to ferment, I notice small tears on the surface. I didn't see that at all this time. The dough was generally in a lot better shape than it usually is.
The second dough still had some issues. After I had mixed everything for the second dough, it actually looked great - like all of those pictures and YouTube videos you see of lumps of panettone dough before it gets shaped. Then, I went to pick it up, and what I had was basically the consistency of choux dough, yet again.
I followed the mixing routine outlined in SPV for the panettone recipe by L'Ecole internationale de boulangerie. My times were almost spot on, except for when adding the butter to both doughs. The recipe says to add all of the butter and mix for 3 minutes which in reality takes me about 10-15 (I can't imagine getting all that butter absorbed in 3 minutes...).
Another possibly interesting anecdote - I notice that during the 12-14 hour bulk ferment (usually takes me about 13), the dough really doesn't seem to rise at all for about the first 8-10 hours, and then shoots up after that, tripling in the remaining time. I'm not sure if this pattern is indicative of an issue or if it's normal.
So, here's where I am at the moment in my panettone troubleshooting:
- It might be the flour, but probably not. I've had success in the past with KA Bread Flour, but I'm not currently having success with it. Neither KA Bread Flour nor KA Sir Lancelot is working for me, so it's probably me.
- It might be the LM. I ordered a pH meter but it won't arrive for a few more weeks. I'm still winging it in the LM department. I'm maintaining it according to the literature I've read, but I'm still not sure how "healthy" it is.
- My hypothesis was that I was overmixing which was primarily driven by mixing the first dough for entirely too long. I still might be overmixing, but I no longer think the first dough is the culprit.
I've had success with Andrea Tortora's recipe in the past, so I'm stubbornly sticking with it so as to not introduce another variable, but I'm starting to wonder if another recipe might work better (now that I have a whole book of them). I might give another recipe a try.
This thread is becoming a journal of my failures. I'll continue to update here. Hopefully, I'll have some success in the near future and it might help someone.
It always is...
The fermentation involved can bring a lot of strength, so much so that it can make the gluten harder to work which can cause problems incorporating butter. As a result, the long mixing times may be heating up the dough too much.
And I think your observation of the primo impasto spending most of its time not moving is definitely not right. If memory serves, I would expect to see movement at around the 4 hour mark.
When you get your pH meter, the most telling points will be that of the starting pH at LM refresh and the end pH of the primo.
Yeah, everything you're saying makes sense.
I have gotten the mixing times a lot lower and I do check the temp of the dough with an infrared thermometer while it's mixing. I generally keep it below 26 C. I've been so worried about heating the dough too much during the mixing process that I use cold everything - dough hook, bowl, flour, eggs all go in the fridge before I begin mixing the first dough. The only thing I don't chill is the butter. In fact, I've been wondering if the dough is too cold when I'm done mixing and that's why it takes a while to rise. If I remember correctly, my dough is usually at about 24 C when I'm done mixing it and I don't dare mix it any further to raise the temp because I'm afraid of overmixing.
In the interest of not wasting time and ingredients, I might wait until the pH meter gets here before making another attempt. This thread might go quiet for a while but this is far from over!
I haven't had time to make panettone lately, but I did get a pH meter and was able to take some readings of my LM during my weekly refreshment.
If I'm not baking with it, I take it out of the fridge once a week and do the following:
The pH readings were as follows:
According to SPV, the ideal range is 4.8 <= pH <= 5.1 at the start of the refreshment and 4.1-4.2 at the end of the refreshment.
The pH of my LM seems a bit high, but also seems to be trending downward with successive refreshments. Before mixing the first dough, I typically follow this same refreshment schedule for 2-3 days (sometimes without the bagnetto). So, I assume that by the time I use the LM, it is closer to the ideal range outlined by SPV, but of course, I don't know that for sure.
I'll have to wait until I have some time to (try to) make panettone to see where the pH of the LM actually is at the time of mixing, as well as the pH of the first dough.
On a related note, I just tried my first panettone from Roy Shvartzapel. I know that making a good panettone is quite the mountain to climb, but after trying Roy's it's as if I finally saw the peak of the mountain through the clouds and I might as well just pack up and go home haha.
Hi Joe, I'm wondering how you keep the PM at 16C - do you have a wine fridge?
I started my PM in the winter and under the sink in a poorly insulated room was perfect.
It'll be my first summer with the PM soon and I'm sure what I'll do. I'm hoping an uninsulated room in the basement will work.
I hadn't thought of the basement - good idea. I was thinking of ordering a reptile incubator but I'm not sure the cost would be justified...
but here's my contribution for this easter.
Dare I say it was a breeze to make!
Very nice!
I'm not jealous at all!
I typically make panettone for Easter mostly because I've only recently learned about colomba. Short of a miracle, I don't think I'll be able to turn one out this year. If anyone were to ask "why didn't you make panettone this year?", I won't even have a good answer. No one who eats my panettone would appreciate or understand anything going on in this thread haha. I could also probably serve them yellow cake and they wouldn't know the difference but let's be honest, I'm not making it for them...
My Panettone is more like cornbread lately. I made a Colomba and it failed the same way. This has to be the LM, though I have been getting 4.1 pH after the refreshes. The failure is coming later in the process, so maybe that is a sign that it's improving.
Dare I say it was the flour?
Well, it couldn't have just been the flour because flour I had used in the past with my 100% sourdough starter did not work with my LM. It seems to have had something to do with the LM and the flour.
pH
I was also armed with a pH meter this time. My pH readings were mostly acceptable, but there is room for improvement. Again, according to SPV, my target is:
I'm getting (roughly):
Prior to mixing the first dough, my LM had rested for 4 hours after its final refreshment and the pH was a bit high - slightly over 4.3, so I actually waited a little longer (not sure how long - an hour max) so the pH would come down. I began mixing the first dough when the LM had a pH of about 4.2.
The first dough, after mixing, had a pH of about 5.4 - 5.5, but after rise it had a pH of 4.8. I understand that the pH after rise should be above 5, so I'll have to work on that (not the faintest idea how, but I'm sure I'll figure it out).
Flour
I changed the flour up this time because in the back of my mind I felt like I had read something about suitable panettone flour (probably on this site) and the description of how unsuitable flour would behave sounded a lot like what I was experiencing.
Rather than King Arthur Sir Lancelot flour, I used Giusto's Ultimate Performer. The LM still used the KA flour, but perhaps I should switch that over as well.
Bake
Everything went surprisingly well. Again, I followed the mixing method from L'Ecole internationale de boulangerie as outlined in SPV. Times were fairly accurate and the dough temp stayed in line.
I had a feeling this panettone would be successful when I saw the first dough triple in about 9-10 hrs. A little too fast maybe? Could've been too high a temp for the bulk rise, not sure (I failed to monitor this closely as I chose to sleep instead lol).
2nd dough mixed without issue - it accepted all of the butter without having to add any prayers, incantations, or additional flour.
I didn't track the final proof too closely, but it was well within the expected timeframe if a little fast (like the bulk rise of the primo).
In the end, my mold was overfilled, and my dough was overglazed, but hey, it was delicious. Best panettone I ever had? Not by a long shot. Best one I ever made? Maybe! This was my first successful panettone after switching from 100% starter to LM and was an old recipe I had made a bunch of times (Andrea Tortora). I was using this sort of as a test to see if I could still make a decent panettone with a LM before exploring some of the other recipes I've been wanting to try - so I'm glad this is behind me and the exploration can begin.
Apologies for the crumb shot looking like the loaf was torn apart by a group of savages.
Chocolate and orange because I didn't expect to get this far and that's what was in the pantry.
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Edit: I also suspect it was a bit over-proofed. I'm not sure if anyone can confirm that by the photo. I typically let the panettone rise just to the top of the mold, but this time it was well beyond that - maybe an inch or so.
I'm really happy that you had panettone success! There's nothing like it. Your crumb looks very good, and I don't think it is overproofed. Probably just too much dough in the mould.
I just had the same experience with the pH after the 1st impasto rise; I think mine was 4.8... so I wasn't sure that the 2nd impasto was going to work. But like yours, it did! I put up a blog post today on this site about it.
so there is more work to be done on the lievito madre, but pause to enjoy success!
Joe your panettone looks amazing, you really should be proud.
Benny
Thank you both for the kind words, Sue & Benito.
This has been a fascinating read, primarily because Joe's experience is almost identical to mine. I've made some successful and less successful batches, but every one of the 5+ times I've used KA Sir Lancelot, the second dough has fallen apart in the final phases of mixing. Interestingly, the flour seems to be quite strong in normal use and its stats suggest it should work well for panettone.
I'm working on a batch now where I've added vital wheat gluten to push the protein to 15%, so we'll see if that makes a difference. But perhaps it's the specific quality of Sir Lancelot's protein and gluten-forming potential that's to blame...
To add to this treasure trove of questions and insightful answers, I have another head-scratcher that I hope someone can help me with. The first dough always comes together beautifully, on temp (79F / 26C), right pH (~5.5), temp-controlled proofing box for the overnight rise... then the volume increases 5x (sometimes more) in 10 hours, and the pH has dropped to 4.43. (Tangential question: could that be what's making the gluten fall apart in the second mix?)
I'm following the EIDB Panettone recipe from "Sourdough Panettone and Viennoiserie," which I had excellent results with last week using the only Italian 'Manitoba' flour I could find in Montreal — but no formula in the book calls for a first dough that is less than 9.75% LM.
Is my starter just over-active? Should I reduce the seed amount for the first dough to achieve 3x rise in 12 hours? Or should I just start the second mix as soon as the dough has tripled in volume, regardless of how much time has passed? I see potential trade offs either way, but I'm also curious why my rising times are so wildly different from what's expected under "ideal" conditions.
I have recently experienced all the things you describe but, the advice here that "just about always the problem is your lievito madre" is 1000% correct in my opinion. I have had many promising first doughs that turned into cornbread or cake batter at various points in the second dough process. Always the problem can be traced back to my LM.
Since the LM has a balance of organisms which produce yeasts, lactic acid and acetic acid, that balance is of great importance. There are a number of important tactics to deploy to produce the kind of LM we are looking for.
pH is important, but doesn't tell the whole story, due to the volatile nature of some acids.... so titration can help to understand the situation. Immature, unbalanced LMs can produce excessive rise and acidic dough, which breaks down gluten.... bagnettos, water storage, cool overnight temps all help.
It may very well be the LM is the issue, though all the signs point to it being healthy. It looks right, tastes right (just slightly alcoholic with an apple-y sweetness), and generally has all the right readings. And, I've had incredible success with it using a different, Manitoba flour. Maybe I was just lucky that time.
As I said, temp, pH, timings are all in the right range (for both long and short refreshments), but I admit have struggled to maintain 68F / 20C overnight temp in water.
Have you successfully used Sir Lancelot to make panettone?
Also, as (I'm assuming) a fellow Vermonter, what flour have you settled on for daily LM feedings and panettone?
@itsjreal, are you a member of the FB group on lievito madre? It's pretty interesting, and they largely rely on taste to determine the quality of their LM. This may be a good way, or even the best way, to determine LM quality, but I personally have never had any success with it. A couple of months ago, I started a second LM using a ripe pear, thinking that maybe it would be more authentic and have different characteristics. But I destroyed a couple of batches of panettone with it before discarding it..... but it tasted exactly like my "good" LM, at least to me...
I have not used Lancelot for panettone, but I have used Galahad for LM maintenance. I have used All Trumps for maintenance also, as it is relatively inexpensive and high protein. For the bake, I have been using Italian flours, but Imay transition to American flours when I run out. But my opinion is that King Arthur produces a very high quality product line, and they are very meticulous in their testing and labeling. I also know that some people can produce good panettone without the highest gluten flour, and also that some people recommend using a somewhat lower protein flour for the second impasto.
I started out thinking that the flour was paramount, and spent a lot of time searching for "Manitoba" flour, which I never found in the USA..... but I now have a different idea.
I am sure that this issue will work itself out for you, and I know how frustrating it can be!
This is very interesting. My main takeaway from this whole experience is that the issue was in fact not my LM, but primarily the flour itself. Since my last post, I have been searching the web for Italian flours, if only to give me some more confidence in the flour as most of them advertise the W value so I don't have to cross my fingers and hope it's high enough.
I also feel like the amount of butter in the recipe has a significant impact on the flour. All of my failed attempts with the Sir Lancelot flour might have succeeded had the recipe called for less butter (I understand that there is almost certainly a minimum percentage of butter required to call the bread panettone, and I don't know if the butter would have had to be reduced below that minimum for a successful bake). My 2nd dough always fell apart at the same point - when adding the last bit of butter (roughly after adding a little more than half of the butter called for in the 2nd dough using Andrea Tortora's recipe). It's as if the flour just couldn't take any more.
For my most recent bake, I followed Roy's recipe from SPV, which I understand to have very high butter percentage compared to other recipes. The result was leagues away from Roy's product, and the dough seemed to be on the verge of breaking down, but it held up well enough to turn out a few passable loaves. This was the most souffle-like panettone I've ever baked and the loaves were collapsing from the moment I opened the oven door. I had to suspend them as quickly as possible. This is possibly just a tangential point, but could also be a clue to bakers more experienced than I in what went wrong and so it might invalidate some of my assumptions/theories regarding LM and flour, which is why I'm mentioning it.
I use Sir Lancelot for LM maintenance and for Neapolitan pizza, but I can't seem to get it to work for panettone. I now have two "successful" panettone bakes using Giusto's Ultimate Performer - successful in quotes because they aren't nearly where I want them to be, but something vaguely resembling a panettone came out of my oven, and it tastes great.
I am still trying different flours. As I've said, I really do feel like my LM maintenance is on point, so if something is wrong, I'm not even sure how to correct it.
This is part of the journey though. I'm sure I will come back here in a few weeks/months and say it's not the flour, it was always the LM LOL.
Thanks to both of you for your responses.
Sue, I am not part of that FB group, though there seem to be several. I assume you're talking about this one? I'm getting in the habit of tasting my LM, so maybe with time I'll pick up on the subtle indications of LM vitality. I agree that KA flours have always treated me well, up to this point. And I turned out a great batch of bagels with Sir Lancelot this morning. But when I can reliably mix a solid panettone dough with other flours and Sir Lancelot always fails, it's hard to not think that's part of the issue. I'll look into the All Trumps flour!
Joe, despite the constant challenges, I'm glad we both have very similar experiences working with Sir Lancelot. I too have felt like the butter addition is where things usually fall apart. Interestingly though, on my most recent batch that I talk about above, the dough fell apart at the addition of the orange paste and salt, before I even got to the butter. I really made a point to mix until the dough was smooth and strong again, but it never got there. Odd, considering it wasn't THAT much being added (only 37g orange paste for 1700g batch). I added the butter eventually anyway, and gave it an extra-long mixing time to no avail. Results were not ideal, though certainly tasty: more like cakettone, but still extraordinarily soft and shreddable.
The process/formula (EIDB) I followed was identical to the previous week when I used Italian Manitoba flour and achieved excellent results. The only difference is I didn't have the pH meter until this most recent batch, and my LM maintenance has been much tighter since then. So I do hesitate to assign blame to the LM...
I'm also glad to hear your experience with Roy's recipe -- I've been really looking forward to trying it, but I'd like to dial in the EIDB one first because the amount of butter in Roy's scares me haha!
- Jesse
Joe, I was just re-reading some of your earlier posts, now that I've been diligently taking pH readings for the past week or so. Again, same experience!
LM 4 hours after short refreshment reads a bit high (~4.3). I've been letting it sit an extra hour to get it down to 4.2. Obviously we want ideal time and ideal pH to align, but when that isn't happening, I'm inclined to think the pH is the more reliable indicator.
By the way, how much LM do maintain at a time? I've been keeping 375 (refreshments of 150s / 150f / 75w), which seems excessive for home use -- mainly because I'm storing it in water overnight and I don't have a container that can properly contain a smaller quantity. I've used the binding method for longer-term fridge storage, but it's really not that much more work to roll it up and tie it, so maybe I'll give that a try with, for example, 125g total (refreshments of 50s / 50f / 25w).
I did the same. I feel like my pH is a bit off and while I do think it's a good indicator of LM health, I also realize that my pH meter is likely less accurate than those used in bakeries and I am not very good about calibrating it. So, I make sure my pH is in the ballpark, my LM is rising as expected, and the flavor of it is not acidic or sour. Those more experienced than I always point to the LM as the issue, and I trust that they are likely correct and I am just finding my way to the same conclusion. I remember reading some posts from Michael about some pH issues he was experiencing and I would've killed to be able to turn out his panettone from the very same post (if I remember correctly), so I can't imagine with the pH readings I'm getting, the behavior, and the flavor, that my LM is so far off that it would cause a complete failure of the dough as opposed to just a less-than-ideal bake, but I am obviously no expert.
I keep somewhere around 250g. I keep the hydration around 42% - 46% with 100g of flour and water. I keep mine bound in the fridge and if I'm not baking with it, once a week I'll take it out, soak it, refresh it 3x, bind it, let it sit at around 16 C for a few hours, and then put it back in the fridge until the following week.
If I am baking with it, I will usually keep it out of the fridge for 2 days and go through a similar process for maintaining it - bagnetto, 3x refreshments, store at 16 C until the next morning when I repeat the process. On the 2nd night, I mix the first dough.
I remember reading somewhere that performing the bagnetto too frequently is actually bad for the LM. This is one thing I do want to experiment with. Every recipe I've seen includes a bagnetto before the 3 refreshments and if this is the formula that the professional bakers are following, it stands to reason that I should do the same. I will say that I noticed that the pH of my LM during the 3 refreshments was closer to the target on day 1 out of the fridge as opposed to day 2 and perhaps that has to do with an unnecessary bagnetto on day 2. I've been wondering if maybe I wouldn't have had to wait for the pH to fall a bit more before mixing my 1st dough if I hadn't performed a bagnetto that morning. I'm not sure - I feel like I should follow the master Italian bakers as opposed to what I find on the web, but I've been curious so might try omitting the bagnetto on day 2 for my next bake.
Edit: typos
It sounds like we both have had reasonable success with panettone *not* made with a proper LM in the past. I converted a liquid starter to stiff one last November for the holiday season and only loosely followed the process. No bagnetto, imprecise storage conditions, etc. I still was able to produce (and sell!) 25x 500g panettones (using La Milanaise Sutton flour, supplemented with some vital wheat gluten). These were not what I would consider top-tier breads, but the dough came together (and stayed together) nicely.
All that to say, I'm certain my LM is not yet perfect, but it's at least as capable of a leaven as my mock LM was at Christmas. And, again, great results with the "proper" LM and Manitoba flour a week or two ago:
Another thought... we take the ability to scale up/down a recipe as a given, maintaining the same percentages and stats. But dough in a commercial environment, at those quantities, does not behave in exactly the same way as it does in a home kitchen, all else being equal. Perhaps (hot take here) to best replicate the results we see in SPV, we need to adapt a bit to our own environment.
But then I see Michael's breads and the continuous refrain of, "It's the LM, dummy!" and I realize how little I actually know!
Yes, I believe this is exactly right.
To support your theory, here's a quote from a page about Iginio Massari's recipe:
Okay cool! And thanks for the link. Though that still doesn't explain why my first dough rises so fast...
I just baked a single 1050g panettone, using Sir Lancelot with added wheat gluten to bring protein to ~15%.
First dough climbed to 3-4x volume (final pH 4.47) in about 8 hours, at which point I started the second dough.
Second dough seemed destined to completely unravel like every other attempt with that flour, but it actually managed to pull itself back together. It took literally 2 hours of mixing, using a combination of the Kitchenaid and my hands. I think the small overall yield was what extended the mixing time -- the dough hook was next to useless at multiple points in the process.
Final proof was a lazy 9 hours, and could have gone a bit longer I think. Will post pics in the next couple days, but looks promising (if a bit over-baked) from the outside.
Looks great to me!
Soft, silky crumb! (Not too lactic, as some would say...!)
So, I think it might be the LM 🤣😅
For this attempt I calibrated my pH meter and decided to follow the EIDB recipe from SPV.
This week I decided rather spontaneously that I wanted to make panettone. With my schedule, I was only able to find a short window of opportunity to make it - I didn't have as many days as I would have liked.
Before deciding to make panettone, I had done my weekly LM refresh on Tuesday. Had I intended on baking at the time, I would not have bothered to refresh it until it was time to use it. I know the fridge sort of retards the fermentation process in a way, so I feel like using the LM shortly after putting it the fridge yields an under-fermented LM at the start of the panettone baking process. This is totally unscientific, but I do notice some differences in a LM that was in the fridge for a week vs just a few days. I took it out of the fridge on Friday to make the first dough.
I went through my usual LM bagnetto and 3 refreshments, but for this bake I only had 1 day to "condition" the LM vs my usual 2.
After the 2nd refresh, I wasn't happy with the pH, so for my final refreshment I used a ratio of 1/0.8 LM/flour with a 47% hydration. I hadn't done this 1/0.8 refreshment since my last failure. Foreshadowing....
This refreshment did bring the pH closer to where it needed to be. When I mixed the first dough, the LM pH was a little higher than 4.3 when ideally it would've been below 4.2, but it was 10pm, so didn't want to wait much longer.
First dough came together as expected and I let it ferment overnight at 26-27 C. As usual, it had tripled in about 8 hours. My dough has never taken the prescribed 12-14 hours to rise - probably another indication that something is wrong. Unfortunately, I forgot to read the pH before and after the first dough's rise.
Second dough turned into cakettone and is currently in the trash haha.
I used the same flour I have had success with for my last two bakes - Giusto's Ultimate Performer. Of course the recipe is a big variable here - I've made a different recipe for my last 3 bakes and EIDB's recipe is closer to Roy's than Andrea Tortora's in terms of butter quantity. I barely succeeded with Roy's, so not surprised that I failed using a similar recipe when starting out with a less then ideal LM.
I think for my next attempt I'm going to really get this LM pH where it needs to be before mixing the dough. When I do a 1/0.8 refreshment like I did with this bake, I prefer to do it earlier on in the LM maintenance rather than as the final refresh before making the dough. I took a risk trying to fit this into my schedule and it didn't turn out well.
A note regarding flour and why NA (North American) flour might be problematic.
3 points:
Strictly speaking flour for panettone should be balanced, i.e., that is flour which has a balanced tenacity / extensibility ratio. Alveograph = .55 - .65. Unfortunately, we can expect NA flours to be overly tenacious, i.e., >1. Flours too tenacious may contribute other issues.
US and Canadian flours are commonly subject to amylase addition, usually in the form of barley malt flour. This common corrective measure is often rather excessive and brings things into the rye territory of amylase activity i.e., falling number ~250. This means degradation occurs far too quickly (see Will's LM)!
Such is nature, that growing conditions in NA means less enzyme (particularly, amylase) activity and more ash (influence of growing conditions) that we can expect higher ash for an equivalent extraction to European flours. This may be problematic, since ash determines acid load relative to pH in respect to fermentation.
Edited for clarity.
I actually remember seeing a similar comment from you on another thread. This is actually the reason I've been seeking out Italian flour. Having effectively read this comment for the second time now (probably a lot more, honestly) I think I understand it, but at first I remember thinking "NA flour has a bunch of junk in it. Let me get flour without junk to rule out problems related to the junk". Very scientific lol, but it is actually this comment that lead me to Guisto's which lead me to some success, so it wasn't all lost on me.
Giusto's Ultimate Performer is organic and the ingredients list only Organic Wheat Flour, so I thought to give it a shot. What I've started to realize is that I don't think anything you've listed out in your comment is listed out on the flour packaging, so I've become wary of NA flours. I don't actually know what I'm buying, which is unfortunate because with the missing information I could eliminate what feels like an enormous variable in my bakes.
Back again with more anecdotal information and some questions.
I made a mistake. During my weekly LM refresh, I forgot to put my bound LM in the fridge and it was left at about 16-19C for an entire week. I was able to get it back to normal after a few days of feeding, at which point it was in good enough shape to use for a bake, so I tried EIDB's recipe again.
My LM pH was consistently at about 4.8-4.9 before fermentation and 4.1-4.2 after. I believe pre-fermentation it should be just over 5, but I can't seem to achieve that. If I want the pH to be higher prior to fermentation, a bagnetto seems to help, but then the LM doesn't reach the 4.1-4.2 target after fermentation. Similarly, skipping the bagnetto (not always, just performing it less frequently) leaves the pH below 5 prior to fermentation, but hits the post-fermentation pH target. Another similar pH issue is that my primo is never over 5 after it triples.
Long story short, I successfully baked EIDB's recipe, which I had failed at on my previous attempt. The dough this time was amazing. Whereas it usually breaks down when I add all the butter, this time I felt like this dough could take on even more butter than the recipe called for. It was really interesting considering all of my ingredients were the same as last time (still using Guisto Ultimate Performer).
One thing I paid more attention to this time around were my temps. My high-tech proofing drawer is an oven, a light, and various kitchen instruments. For 32C+, keep the light on with the oven closed. 30C, Crack the door with a wooden spoon. 28C, place the wooden spoon in a different spot or use a bigger object. 26C, open the dor to the first stop. I had all this worked out, or so I thought.
I realize now that I was probably fermenting my 1st dough at around 30C, which is probably why it never took even 10hrs to triple. I always thought higher temp just meant that the dough rises faster and lower temp meant it rises slower, but I'm now wondering if temp had anything to do with my broken doughs. Perhaps there's more to fermenting at a higher temp than I thought. This time, I left the dough at 26C and made sure of it - the dough tripled in about 10-11 hrs and mixing the second dough the following day was actually quite easy.
The loaf itself is also a little different. The crumb has more "pull" or maybe chew to, if that makes sense. A little more bready and less cakey.
One problem I'm having now is oven spring, or lack thereof. My guess is that my glaze is hardening before the dough is finished springing. The tops of my loaves are flatter than I'd like and the crumb is a bit tight as well.
Do you guys bake panettone with steam? Seems like it would make sense, but if no one is doing that and still getting great results, my oven spring problem might be something else. Is there anything else that can be done to prevent the glaze from hardening so much so quickly (maybe some ingredient or ratio of ingredients I'm missing, less glaze, etc)? I know - try it without glaze and see what happens, but thought I'd try and get your thoughts on it as well.
Edit: I guess it could be that my LM is not strong enough to "push through" the hardening glaze during the bake, but aside from the oven spring issue, my LM seems to be quite strong and is rising well, so I assume it's not this but who knows.
I just wanted to say that I have fixed the issues I was having with my LM!
Honestly, I was getting close to throwing the towel in, but I turned it around!
I'm back on top of the panettone mountain and I feel like I've got it all figured out! Truely!
To recap, my LM was too keen to acidify, and it still is a bit, but while the acidification was at the expense of leavening power, I have now got the yeast rocketing! And everything is moving so very quickly now! I still have to be careful of the acidification, but if you look after the yeast, it will naturally keep the acidification in check.
What got me there?! I totally underestimated and forgot just how important lavaggio is!
Michael
That's good news!
Can you elaborate a bit more? It sounds like a change to your LM maintenance, but there are a lot of variables - how often you perform the bagnetto, how long you soak the LM, temp of the water, how much sugar is used, etc.
I realize you might have been experiencing different issues than I was but I am eager to learn from your experience nonetheless.
Hi Joe.
I'm routinely doing a very warm bath daily as per the Rolando Morandin method.
I prepare water for the bagnetto at 40C and leave the pieces to soak for at least 30 minutes. Sugar, I don't measure but is likely around 2-3g/L.
I'm planning to write a piece regarding this at some point...
It has been a while since my last update and sadly, I have yet to crack this.
Ive attempted panettone maybe half a dozen times since my last update, with varying degrees of success, but still more often than not my dough splits.
I've suspected for a while that the dough splitting has something to do with adding butter while mixing the second dough because that's when I usually see it happen, but now I'm thinking that could be a red herring. Two "bakes" (never really got to the baking part...) stand out, one of which was today.
A few weeks ago I tried making panettone and everything went well until I added the inclusions. The dough looked great until the very end when I added chocolate chips and dried fruit (cherries I believe) that I had soaked in Cointreau. The dough split about a minute into mixing in those ingredients.
Today, I tried making panettone again and the second dough looked amazing after having added all of the yolks. All that was left were the aromatics, butter, and fruit. At the same time, I added 4 things - salt, vanilla bean, lemon zest, and orange zest. I thought nothing of it - I've never had a problem adding these ingredients, yet similar to adding the cointreau-soaked cherries, the dough split about a minute into mixing in these ingredients.
So, in these two cases, the butter wasn't the culprit. I also think I'm comfortable ruling out overmixing - the dough seems to go from having an incredibly strong and developed gluten network to a sticky, choux-like, cottage cheese looking mess in literally 1-2 minutes. I guess I'd be surprised if overmixing happened so suddenly and with such a drastic, significant impact on a dough that seemed so strong.
I'm wondering now if it has something to do with acidity. In both of the cases I mentioned, I added acidic ingredients when the dough split. In the first case, I suspect it was the Cointreau. In the second case, I'm not sure, but when I add citrus zest I don't measure it. All of the recipes I use call for citrus paste and in place of it I use zest (which is from the original Andrea Tortora recipe that I casually baked a few times before going down this rabbit hole). Perhaps I added too much zest. Maybe the paste, which the recipe actually calls for, has less acidity than the raw zest and so is a more suitable ingredient.
I'm sure I will figure this out in time, but if you have any ideas, I'm all ears.
I don't mean to resurrect this thread, only to add some concrete information that might help the next person.
Since having my second dough "split", I've come across a few people and posts around the web reporting the same issue, yet no one ever seemed too sure of what causes it.
Of course, this might not be the only reason, but in "pH 4.1", Montanari states that this is an issue of too much lactic acid in the madre (forgive the Google translation from Italian - something is probably getting lost but the overall point seems clear):
This isn't really surprising, but it took me a year to understand this. Hopefully, it helps the next person sort their issues out a lot faster.
Hi Joe, just stumbled across this thread as I’m starting my panettone journey and the same thing has happened to me with the dough breaking. How did you end up fixing the problem with the lactic acid?
thanks in advance, Sandra
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When my dough was breaking, it was the second dough that was losing all of its gluten strength during the mixing process. I've certainly had it fall after being hung, but given it's further along in the baking process, there are more possible causes.
For instance, your PM could've been fine but your second dough could've over fermented.
Anyway, I did fix my issue by pushing the PM to be more acetic. Fir me that was a matter of better controlling cold fermentation temps and being careful not to go push warm refreshments too far.
It's hard to say exactly how to fix these issues. I'm always surprised at how people fix what seems to be the same issue in so many different ways.
Thanks so much for replying Joe! I know it’s over a year that this thread finished but I thought I’d give it a shot to ask the question and hope you were still out there making and perfecting the panettone!! I appreciate it!
The second dough did seem a little loose and had less elasticity than the first dough but it wasn’t too bad. Maybe it’s a PM issue cause the first dough was just under pH5 after rising and it also took more than 12 hours to triple.
After cooking the panettone it deflated almost instantly so I quickly flipped it and then it broke after a few minutes. This morning I can see that the whole inside is hollow. The surrounding is airy and the leftover crumb is what I’m dreaming to achieve. It looks like all the dough ended up at the top! Lol. Taste is perfect though! Haha
I’m in Australia so temp is a problem in my house and I don’t have a chiller so I’m using a polystyrene box with an ice pack that I change a few times a day and it goes anywhere from 13-17deg C. Also I don’t have a proofer so I’m just using my microwave light with the door ajar. I have temp probes to keep track.
I’m going to try 1:2:0.42 (or 0.35 when I do a bagnetto) warm feed 26-28 for 4-6 hours and then cool feed 1:1:0.42 for 18-20.
I’m just reading about the bagnetto which I’ve never seen before so I might do that every 2nd day as I’m having mixed information of people that say do it every morning and ones that say don’t do it every morning.
disclaimer that I have no idea about the science and how to fix my PM except for 1:2 feed to reduce the acidity and that’s it. No idea about the temps and why it needs a warm and a cold - I’m just following a recipe. Lol.
I also made the Tortora one last year using my liquid sourdough starter and it was easy and successful (except the crumb was more like pandoro than panettone) so now I’m doing a PM and the giorilli recipe and it’s driving me crazy! But like you, I’ve started now and I’m on a mission to work it out.
Thanks again for replying.
2 possible issues for this:
- shaping issue -> with the final shaping you incorporated a huge air bubble in the middle.
- uneven distribution of inclusions, especially if they melt during the baking process (chocolate chips, etc)
If you are happy with the rest, I wouldn't change anything, just focus on this 2 steps.
Ooh bugger! Never thought it could be a shaping problem but you could be right! I haphazardly just shaped it and threw it in the casing cause it was getting late and I knew it would take longer than 6hours to rise. And it did of course! It took around 10 hours. Ugh! So next time I’ll take a bit more note while shaping and be a bit more careful.
As for the inclusions I’ll also check for the distribution in my final dough. I really didn’t take a good look at where they ended up at the time but a very interesting possibility. Also I maybe didn’t dry my sultanas enough before adding them to the mix. Maybe the combination of being too wet and ending up in the same spot could’ve contributed? Food for thought and something I will look out for next time. I’m hoping that’s the case cause then it’ll be an easy fix! Fingers crossed!!
thanks so much for those tips!!! Very very useful information!!! :)
Sandra
i had a problem once with my panettone breaking up and falling out when I inverted it, and I concluded that the main problem was that the inclusions were too moist (although I was also following a slightly different recipe than the usual one I follow so I can’t be sure). I now dry my raisins in a very low oven after soaking.
Given how fantastic the crumb looks on the portion of your panettone that was left in the mold, you must be pretty close to a very successful bake.
By the way, I don’t have a ph meter, and just test my levieto madre by smelling and tasting it (you don’t need to swallow to tell how acidic it is).
Good luck with your next batch! I definitely think you’re on the right track!
Charlotte
Hi Charlotte!
im really hoping that’s the case!!
I like the idea of drying them in a low oven. Might try it. Thanks for the tip
I do agree that the crumb left looks amazing!! Hopefully trial number six will be a winner!!!
I'm perpetually out here making and perfecting panettone lol. For maybe the first half of this year, I was making it every week, but haven't had the time lately. I always keep an eye on these forums though - I've found this is probably the best place for panettone help without taking a class or something like that. The whole panettone space seems to be heating up for the holidays though.
That's a great pH after the first rise and also wouldn't be overly concerned that it took more than 12 hours, but obviously something went wrong so who knows. For context, my current issue is that my primo pH drops like a rock, getting down to 4.7 - 4.3 after tripling. Even with that low pH, my panettone rarely falls when hung, so the primo pH might have been fine.
It sounds like you have it under control, but temperature is critical so make sure.
"just following a recipe"😱 good for you!
I find there are few truths in the world of panettone. If you continue down this road, expect to hear conflicting opinions about literally everything. It's kind of frustrating, but I feel like the only way to decide what works for you is to just try different things.
I think your plan makes sense. When my PM was very lactic, I skipped warm refreshments entirely for a while (cold temps, low hydration is said to promote acetic acid). I also had a lot of success with water maintenance where the PM is submerged for the overnight fermentation.
Last year when I followed tortoras recipe using my 100% hydration sourdough starter it was easy and successful. I did over cook them at the time as my temperature probe was dodgy and gave me wrong temps - so the panettone’s were overcooked and dry. They still tasted great! They also looked more like a pandoro than a panettone. My goal for this year was to get an open crumb and create a PM. I found Giorelli’s recipe. I bought new temp probes and a pH meter and converted my sourdough starter to a PM. I used the bakestreet method but the water resting annoyed me and I kept seeing all these beautiful PM that looked like flowers after rising and looked like lace when cut - and they were done using free method so I switched to that and followed the lily artisan method.
in the back of my mind im like how did the Italians do it years ago without pH meters and temperature gauges in their backyard setups? Surely it can’t be too scientific and precise like all these instructions? Lol! So I went ahead and just started making the panettone’s. Im on my 5th fail now! Haha! This hollow one was my best tasting and best crumb yet. So I know im close.
I read that the pH of the first dough after tripling should be between 5-5.5. Mine was under 5. Was almost gonna toss it but I thought I’d just go ahead anyway. The fats absorbed like a dream and was super quick to mix but came out much weaker than my previous trial that was mixed for even longer. Boh!
as for the PM recipe I’m following. It’s like 2 feeds per day. One warm for 3-4hrs and one cool for 18-22 hours. The ratios were 1:1, 1:1.5 or 1:2 when needed. I try to stick to the 1:1 so I don’t consume too much flour. I have minimal understanding on why one warm and one cold but just following instructions. I know it’s about the acids and bacteria but the whole science if it is way over my head.
yesterday I did a bagnetto and fed 1:2:.35 and left it for as long as it took to triple at 27-28deg. It took 6 hours - so not ideal. I then fed 1:1:0.4 and put it in a polystyrene box with ice packs which goes 13-18deg. It’s still there now and I haven’t checked.
after my feed, I discovered Michael Wilson’s blog on another site where he talks about the cold maintenance being better in a water bath for beginners and the free method is mainly used by people that are experts. Trust me to think I was an expert! Lol! So after todays warm refresh I’m going to do an overnight ferment in a bath and see how quickly it triples tomorrow. I’ll see if that makes a difference. I’m glad to see you’re doing that too and having good success so im definitely going to give that a try. That may be the answer to my PM woes!
The information out there is indeed conflicting - some say do bagnetto everyday, others say it weakens the PM if you do it every day. Some say free maintenance is best others say water or bound is best. All I want is a formula to say - when its too acidic do this; when it doesn’t triple in 3 hours do that, when its too lactic do this… etc.. etc… lol! I just have to keep learning and trialing until I find something that works with my schedule and basic equipment. Thanks for the tip for reducing lactic acid. I’ll keep that in my notes if it breaks again. These little tips are highly valuable!! Thanks so much!!! In a few days I’ll try again and hopefully fingers crossed i nail my first good one!! I’m glad I started trialing early and still have time to get a few out to my family and friends for Christmas.
For what it's worth, I went through the same thing and now have a phone full of beautiful pictures of my PM in all of its croissant-like alveolated glory and yet my loaves don't have that exaggerated open crumb you see on social media. There's a lot to it, but a healthy PM is a good start.
Make sure to only change one thing for each trial and try to keep everything else constant. For example, you say in your latest trial that you mixed the dough for less time than your previous trial. I think when it comes to mixing time, a huge factor is temperature. It could've been that your previous trial primo was a lot colder and better handled the long mixing time. I think the pH of your primo is probably ok. I've heard of targeting lower values like 4.7 when making an open-crumb panettone.
The less starter you use, the longer fermentation will take. If 1:1 takes 4 hours, I don't think 1:2 taking 6 hours is bad. I think the benchmark you often hear is that the PM should triple when refreshed 1:1 and left in 28-30C for 3-4 hours. Change one variable and the others change - if you don't feed 1:1 you might not hit 3-4 hours, if your temp is too low, it'll take longer, etc.
Read all of Michael's stuff and then read it again. Sometimes I will randomly search for his comments on the forum to read through them all over again. I like the water method because I feel like it has some indicators to help judge the health of the PM (though I've also heard that these indicators mean nothing. seeing the trend here? lol). For example, I think the PM should float within 60 - 90 minutes of submerging or something like that. The percentage of the PM that is above the surface is another indicator - the more submerged it is, the more acidic (or I guess lactic) it is. Another thing to look at is the skin that forms - the harder the skin, the more acetic.
But again, you will hear different opinions about maintenance. I think Michael's opinion echoes that of the maestros who feel the PM has a tendency to sour during free management if you're not careful. I've also heard others say that free management is the easiest given it's easier to visually analyze (without it being bound in a sac or a watery mess). I currently keep my PM free, in the chiller at 11C for 2-3 days 😅 🤷🏻♂️. I haven't been baking with it lately though - in that case I'd follow a more typical process.
Lol yeah this is all I ever wanted and I told myself that once I learned enough, I would help people by giving them the clear answers I always wanted, but of course it's not that simple. So many times I've told people what I'd do with the PM in their situation and they do the exact opposite and fix all of their problems.
There is a book called Omnia Fermenta written by Giambattista Montanari and there are a few pages that are as close to what you're looking for as anything I've found. He basically explains different defects in the PM and primo and explains exactly how to fix them. But again, I've had issues with my PM that align exactly with some of the cases in the book and I wound up fixing it in a completely different way.
Good luck though! Sounds like you are on the right track.
hi Joe,
thanks for your reply and all your valuable information. I really appreciate it. It’s given me the confidence to continue doing what I’m doing and not to worry about what I see on Instagram being the magic formula.
I thought the PM had to look like those flowery lacy ones and I will get the open crumb! You’ve just shattered my dream that it may not always be the case!! Haha! Kidding! But it is nice to know that a not so pretty pm can still produce good results (and vice versa).
Yesterday I did a 1:1 warm refresh and it took around 5 hours to triple. Last night I went back to doing the water bath for overnight. It’s in the chiller now at around 17 degrees. I had a look this morning and it was floating. I’ll leave it there for 20 hours and tonight will try the warm refresh 1:1 and see how it rises in the 3 hours. Hopefully it hits no more than 4hrs and not too acidic. It’s really testing my patience to change only one thing at a time! Lol! But dammit I will do it!!
I will re read all of Michael’s stuff again too. He really needs to write a book. Might also look into the book you mentioned. I’ve seen it pop up a lot in the conversations I’ve read.
I think the conclusion here is to read read read, get lots of tips and learn about my individual pm and what works best for it rather than follow a formula or specific method. Just treat it as one of my kids with its own personality and temperament and work with that. Lol!!
thanks again for all your tips and guidance. I will keep up with my trials and hopefully keep improving. Next one I make I’ll let you know how I go!!
Nice and soft crumb apart from the fact that it’s hollow. Lol!
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From reading your post, you might be able to help me. I am making Tortora's Panettone for the first time. Not my first panettone, but my first using his recipe. My question deals with the three refreshes of the LM. He clearly says to dump the entire batch of the first refresh into the second refresh but he does not say either way about how much of the second refresh goes into the third. I would appreciate your thoughts on this.....thanks