The Italians enter the Christmas spirit with a fragrant, yeasty slice of panettone — Christmas isn’t Christmas without it on our festive tables. We can never get enough of it, especially for us who are Milanese. We have a near-cultish devotion to panettone when the Christmas season kicks in.
But how many Italians know that an increasing number of American people are also enjoying the pleasure of an indulgent panettone? And it’s not only those from the substantial Italian-American communities.
This new panettone culture has caught on in California and other parts of the US. In cities that boast the country’s best delis and some of the best bread such as NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, the panettone has begun to measure up. Today tasting a slice of Italy’s fruity Christmas favorite in a pastry shop is becoming part of the American urban scene.
Davide Longoni came to California to produce panettone with local produce (Copyright: Brambilla Serrani)
In San Francisco, noted chef Roy Shvartzapel serves his own panettone at his restaurant FromRoy on 575 Mission Street. Californians also buy it through his virtual luxury bakery in Los Gatos.
Mentored by Iginio Massari, a great panettone master from Brescia, Roy has spent years obsessing and perfecting what he calls “the Mt. Everest of the baking world.” Roy is pursuing his ambitious dream to sell his panettone in Milan, where the iconic Christmas specialty originated several centuries ago.
Or what about the superlative panettone served at Emporio Rulli in historic downtown Larkspur in Marin County? Pastry chef Gary Rulli learned the art of panettone-making in Milan.
pasticIl panettone Milanese va in trasferta a Los Angeles (Copyright: Brambilla Serrani)
This year for the first time in the glorious history of panettone, a true baker from Milan, Davide Longoni, went to California to produce one entirely made in California. Longoni is a baking guru born in the Monza and Brianza province, who lives in Milan where he has three very well established bakeries (Panificio Davide Longoni) located in the Porta Romana area. Longoni is taking whole grains in new directions. He grows and harvests them in the proximity of the Chiaravalle Abbey outside Milan and in the Abruzzo region to obtain flours that connect to his bakery’s ethos: producing a healthier, better-tasting and more environmentally friendly bread.
“Bread is joy, art and revolution,” he says. His modern way of understanding bread as an agricultural product induced him to found PAU, an association of Panificatori Agricoli Urbani, or urban agricultural bakers.
Recently, in California Longoni led a small team of Italian bakers and pastry chefs to craft a panettone that represents a new wave in bakery research.
Davide Longoni, a true Milanese baker, is in Los Angeles to make Californian panettone (Copyright: Brambilla Serrani)
The project was conceived by Carlo Mari and Carlotta Borruto, cofounders at California Innovation, an organization located in San Francisco, and also cofounders at Italia Innovation based in Verona, Italy. The panettone was produced in San Mateo at Kitchentown, a startup incubator that helps develop, commercialize and launch impact-driven food products.
Two other experts involved in the project with Longoni are Matteo Piffer, a baker from Rovereto who is in charge of the business development at his family bakery Panificio Moderno, and Mauro Iannantuoni, head pastry chef at Ernst Knam in Milan. Iannantuoni opened his pastry shop in Brooklyn, NY and also worked at Armani Restaurant in Manhattan for a while before making his way back to his home country to continue pursuing his love for the products of his land.
“Together with Carlo and Carlotta, we selected the best Californian producers of raw ingredients to craft a panettone entirely made in California but prepared according to the Milanese artisanal pastry recipe and heritage,” says Longoni — or mother yeast, corn flour, eggs and butter, and contains only sultana raisins and candied orange, citron and lemon zest.
The three Italian bakers use stone-milled flour by Cainrnspring Mills, organic eggs from Clover, a co-op located in Sonoma County, and low-processed organic butter produced by Straus Family Creamery, a dairy located in Marin County.
Pane fresco alla panetteria Longoni di Milano (Copyright: Brambilla Serrani)
Their panettone has been leavened using a natural yeast started in San Francisco with the Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis, which gives sourdough bread its characteristic taste.
“The ‘canditi’ we used are fantastic,” remarks Longoni. “They are very aromatic, so Californian. Oranges and lemons were candied by Michael Recchiuti Confectionary.” Sultana raisins and sugar were carefully sourced by Bi-Rite markets, an institution in San Francisco.
Longoni and his team bake three variants of their panettone. Besides the classic traditional Milanese recipe, they also made a chocolate and lemon version, and a panettone al caffè, where coffee is contained in the dough.
They employ chocolate from Dandelion, a premium chocolate producer of San Francisco, and coffee from Verve Coffee Roasters, a coffee company from Santa Cruz.
“This year we produced a small quantity of our panettone that was available at Bi-Rite markets,” he says. “It was an experiment, a pilot project.” Next year, the quantity will increase to some 5,000 panettones that will give Californians a chance to get used to finer panettone made by authentic Italian masters.
“Americans are showing a real interest in Milanese panettone. They simply love it,” says Longoni. He adds that FromRoy was somehow “a good source of inspiration because he is an American pastry chef who really bakes a truly Italian-style panettone in California.”
Yet, the iconic panettone remains an emblem of the Milanese patisserie.
“Panettone consumption was at first recorded in a manuscript written by a humanist, Giorgio Valagussa, in the late 1400s that is today preserved at the Ambrosian Library in Milan,” explains Stanislao Porzio, a panettone connoisseur who is the founder, organizer, and promoter of Re Panettone, a competition that since 2008 has been gathering the top pastry chefs in the panettone category from across Italy. The event, held every November in Milan, crowns the “King Panettone.”
Valagussa worked at the Sforza Castle as a tutor of Ludovico Maria Sforza, the duke of Milan, also known as Ludovico Il Moro. “Valagussa described the Milanese tradition of serving this enriched bread on December 24 along with three other large special loaves used only once a year,” explains Porzio, who is also the author of the book Il Panettone. Storia, Leggende e Segreti di un Protagonista del Natale.
“At that time, panettone was not sweetened,” he says.
There are at least three other legends about its invention. The most famous has it that one cold Christmas Eve back in the 1400s, a young cook at the Sforza court named Toni was preparing bread for the great Christmas banquet held by the Duke of Milan. But despite the joyous celebrations, Toni was melancholic and a bit scattered. In an involuntary gesture, he dropped eggs, sugar raisins and candied fruit into the dough. That sweet rich bread was served to the guests anyway and they really loved it: that’s how Toni’s bread – il pan de Toni in Italian – got started.
“The second legend states that an aristocrat named Ughetto degli Atellani fell so madly in love with a baker’s daughter that decided to abandon his status and work at his father-in-law’s store located on Corso Magenta, where he created the recipe soon to become a local success,” says Porzio.
According to the third legend, panettone got its start by a nun named Ughetta in her monastery. Sister Ughetta made her sisters very happy and turned herself into a sort of businesswoman. The Milanese word “Ughet” translates as sultana raisins, which are one of the main ingredients of panettone together the colorful candied fruit. What is the symbolism behind those ingredients? We will never know exactly.
“Panettone is the symbol of Milanese cultural identity, yet it is by its nature the antithesis of a zero-km food if we look at its ingredients,” Porzio admits.
“Candied fruit is a typical product of southern Italy, the sultana raisins were a gift from Constantinople, cornflour originated in the Americas and vanilla comes from Madagascar,” remarks Porzio.
We only know that Milanese bakers and confectioners have always made panettone for the tables of Lombards at Christmas. “In the early ’20s, Motta and Alemagna were the very first two panettone industrialists to spread the custom of eating the fruity Christmas cake throughout Italy,” explains Porzio. “Later in the ‘80s, the roles of artisan pastry chef Achille Zoia from Cologno Monzese and Rolando Morondin were also important, teaching today’s pastry chefs the art of the panettone through training courses across the country.”
Porzio is campaigning to add panettone to the UNESCO’s list of Intangible Heritage, exactly like pizza.
Readers are welcome to sign a petition via his website www.repanettone.it
“We want to protect the know-how, the correct art of panettone-making, which is a central element of Milanese and Italian identity,” he says. Porzio also hopes that it will be recognized by the EU as a TSG (Traditional Speciality Guaranteed) product whose authenticity depends on the traditional recipe and production method.
“But I also believe that the panettone produced in Italy has something extra,” remarks Porzio.
The very Milanese baker Longoni believes in the free circulation of ideas and knowledge instead: the so-called “Made in Italy” is important but its definition is quite complex. “I only know that everybody is pursuing a protectionist discourse towards products, but what about if we begin to protect the know-how instead?” asks Longoni.
He and his team have found a way to share knowledge. “We protect knowledge and promote the exchange of know-how, setting in motion a virtuous circle: we give and naturally we receive. Instead of spending energy to protect and limit, let us spend it to guarantee transparency.”
Mauro Iannantuoni defines Longoni as “a great professional.” Iannantuoni and Longoni began experimenting on their first panettone together in 2008. “I look forward to starting a new job in his workshop next year. I am excited about it,” says Iannantuoni, who is very happy about the result. “Our artisanal panettone produced in California is excellent. But it certainly expresses a new concept. I only hope that it does not attract criticism from purists,” he says.
“Anyway, the candidacy of the art of panettone-making on the UNESCO’s list is most welcome.”
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