Pandoro

A dusting of white powdered sugar makes its eight points and hollows stand out, and cutting it reveals a golden crumb made with plenty of eggs. Verona’s pandoro is a tall, star-shaped Christmas sweet fragrant with butter and vanilla. Basic pandoro contains no pieces of fruit, and its fine air bubbles are formed evenly. The rise of its sponge-like yellow crumb comes not only from egg foam but also from fermenting a dough rich in eggs and butter.

Refreshing the starter and working in the fat in stages

Rather than combining flour, sugar, eggs, butter, and natural leaven all at once, the first dough is fermented, and then new flour, eggs, and fat are added. The ingredients are gradually worked in while the dough’s elasticity and extensibility are maintained.

In Giovanni Ricciardella’s method, the starter is refreshed three times; egg yolks, sugar, water, and flour are combined, and cold butter is added once the dough has developed elasticity. The first dough, fermented until it has tripled in volume, is refrigerated. The next day, flour is added and the dough is kneaded again, and then an emulsion of butter, egg yolks, sugar, honey, vanilla, and other ingredients is added in several portions.

Cocoa butter is sometimes included in the emulsion. It is worked into the dough as a fat, not as an inclusion like chocolate pieces. Separately, there is also IRCA’s method for professionals, which makes the dough in three stages, adding whole eggs, egg yolks, and butter a little at a time and bringing the dough temperature to 26–28°C.

For home baking, there are also methods that replace the process of refreshing a natural leaven with dry yeast. Sachiko Fujino’s recipe makes the first dough with milk, honey, flour, and other ingredients, adds eggs and the remaining flour and lets the dough ferment, and then wraps cold butter in the dough, rolls it out, and folds it. Because it uses a kugelhopf mold with a hole in the center instead of a dedicated star mold, its shape and process differ from the traditional star-shaped method, even though it is presented under the same name.

On the outskirts of Verona, some makers bake pandoro at home in winter to give to family, relatives, and friends. Giovanni Castellani, featured in 2023, bakes 30 or more every winter and recommends starting preparations four days before they are to be eaten. In his own method, if the dough exceeds 26°C during kneading, he stops and chills it, and the later fermentation in the mold proceeds at 26–28°C. He also chills the mixer bowl, the beater, and the egg yolks until just before use, managing separately the mixing, which must not warm the dough, and the fermentation, which involves waiting while holding the temperature.

Proofing in the mold and baking into an eight-pointed star

The divided dough is shaped by pirlatura, rounding it by rotating it on the work surface so its surface becomes taut, and is placed in a buttered mold. Because the dough rises along eight points that continue from the sides down to the bottom, the star shape is not merely a decoration on top but the form of the entire cake. Proofing in the mold proceeds without forming large voids, with the internal air bubbles also kept even.

After it has baked through to the center, it is left to cool in the mold for a while, then removed and left to continue cooling. When the separately supplied powdered sugar is dusted on just before eating, the cake and the powdered sugar are placed in a bag and shaken lightly. The sugar reaches even into the hollows, accentuating the contrast with the golden crumb.

The 1894 advertisement and application, and the 1895 certificate of protection

Domenico Melegatti advertised “Pan d’Oro” in the local newspaper L’Arena on March 21–22, 1894. In the application filed in October of the same year, it became the single word “Pandoro,” and on March 20, 1895, a three-year certificate of industrial property was issued. The sweet advertised as “Pan d’Oro” was subsequently filed under the name “Pandoro” and received protection the following year.

The refinement of the leva, and the stories behind the star shape and the name

According to the family’s account, its basis is the leva, a leavened dough made in Verona on Christmas Eve. It is said to have been refined by increasing the eggs and butter and removing elements such as the topping, which were thought to hinder its rise. The area’s older nadalin is also star-shaped, but it is a denser sweet. The tall, soft form is described as a reworking of a festive leavened dough.

As for the name, which evokes “golden bread,” there is also a family legend that a young worker, seeing the cut surface in the sunlight, said, “It truly is bread of gold.” As for the mold’s eight points, the City of Verona’s industrial heritage documents attribute them to the work of the painter Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca. Through refined ingredients and an ingenious mold, it is finished as a soft, tall star.

Melegatti’s own company history also includes a story that he challenged competing artisans, offering 1,000 lire to anyone who could make public the true recipe (the proportions of ingredients and the method). It has been handed down as a promotional anecdote that stressed the secrecy of his own formula as artisans making similar sweets appeared.

Differences from panettone

Milan’s panettone is also a leavened Christmas sweet, but the basic version has a round body and a cracked top, air bubbles that stretch vertically, and raisins and candied citrus mixed in. Pandoro is star-shaped, with a fine, uniform crumb and characteristic aromas of butter and vanilla. Some panettone contain no fruit, but even these differ from pandoro in shape and crumb texture.

Ingredient ratios under the naming regulations, and special formulations

Italy’s 2005 naming regulation and its 2017 amendment set out requirements for shape, fermentation, and ingredients. They require the use of Category A hen’s eggs or egg yolks, with at least 4% egg yolk and at least 20% milk fat derived from butter made from milk cream. Both percentages are calculated on the dough just before dividing, converted to dry weight, and based on the portion excluding solid additions such as fruit. Even when whole eggs are used, they are converted to the dry-matter equivalent of egg yolk. These figures are neither the weight of the butter itself that is added nor the fat percentage on a per-slice nutrition label.

Some versions are filled with cream or coated in chocolate, and the regulations also set conditions for added ingredients and for special formulations that replace gluten-containing ingredients with technologically necessary ingredients. The fine, soft texture of star-shaped pandoro comes from a method in which eggs and butter are worked in stages and the dough is fermented.

Glossary