The First Panatone of the Season

My family has a Panatone recipe.  Panatone is an Italian holiday bread that usually incorporates dried fruit and tastes of anise.  I've never seen a published recipe that is anywhere near what ours is, and I've never tasted a store bought panatone that tasted anywhere near as good as ours.

It comes out around Thanksgiving and right before Christmas and when word gets out that there's panatone, cousins and family come crawling looking for some - toasted and buttered.

Inspired by BowerPowerblog.com, I decided to  let Lil' T help.  He did a fantastic job.


(that's pbandj on his face)


(mama showing him how to knead it)

He even grunted when he was kneading the dough.




Eight hours after scalding the milk, the bread is done.  There's mixing, and kneading, and rising, and kneading, and rising, and cooking.

It sure is pretty.


Not my best panatone, but it is early November, so there's lots of time to improve.

My whole life I would pick the glaceed fruit out of the loaves, so as an adult, I only add REAL dried fruit and raisins.  With our new budget, there wasn't room for dried figs, so Bubbs bought raisins.

The raisins wouldn't stick (there were like three raisins in the first loaf - second still hasn't been cut), it was really fluffy - which is wrong, and because there weren't enough raisins, there wasn't enough flavor.

We'll see if its better toasted with butter in the morning.

More baking in the future for this muffin (though keeping his hand out of the kitchen aid requires two parents in the room).