Panettone vs Pandoro: differences and history

There’s no Christmas in Italy without the presence on the table of panettone and pandoro, the two sweet symbols of the Christmas holidays. Regarding these two traditional desserts, Italians are divided into two “factions”: panettone lovers and pandoro lovers. The former are ready to swear that the best Christmas dessert is panettone, for its unique taste and fragrance, while the latter fight strenuously for pandoro’s softness and absence of those weird candied fruits. Who’s right or wrong is not known: every year the diatribe starts, pounds on pounds of pandoro and panettone are eaten, but neither of the two factions ever gets the better of the other one. It’s easy, panettone and pandoro are both excellent!

That there are substantial differences between the two, however, is undeniable, differences that concern the ingredients of which they’re made, the shape, the texture and the taste. Let’s find out the differences between the two most loved desserts of Italian Christmas, two desserts that have two very different origins too.

The traditional panettone

Don’t call it cake, because panettone is a sweet bread. Originally from Lombardy, it has a typical dome shape that extends from a cylindrical base and is usually about 12–15 cm high (4.7–5.9 inches), for a total weight of 1 kg (2.2 pounds). The leavening process itself requires several days, giving panettone its distinctive characteristics. The ancient recipe demands that panettone be made exclusively using natural sour dough, commonly known as mother yeast.

Compared to other types of yeast, fermentation takes place in a much more gradual manner, requires many more hours but gives the possibility to obtain a product with much better characteristics. The product obtained in this way is a panettone characterized by an extremely soft dough, with a typical porous texture, with a more pleasant and characteristic flavor. The king of Italian pastry Iginio Massari, for example, provides for a complex processing that requires four leavenings and two doughs, for a total of 62 hours. The ingredients of a classic panettone are:

• water
• flour 0
• salt
• sugar
• egg yolks
• milk
• butter
• candied fruits
• raisins
• vanilla
• mother yeast.

The traditional pandoro

The pandoro is a leavened dessert made up of soft dough based on flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Its main feature is the eight-pointed star shape obtained thanks to a special mold. Compared to panettone, the pandoro does not contain candied fruits or raisins, it has a lighter consistency, a delicate aroma and a more predominant butter and vanilla flavor. It is usually served with icing sugar sprinkled on the surface before being cut into vertical or horizontal slices, in the latter way to obtain slices with a characteristic star shape. The traditional pandoro is undoubtedly a dessert of Italian high pastry, which is made with three preparations based on:

• Flour 00
• water
• mother yeast
• beer yeast
• eggs
• butter
• vanilla.

The origins of the panettone

Although developed in its contemporary form in 1919 by the mind of Angelo Motta, founder of the homonymous company still active on the market, panettone is a food of ancient and humble origins, which sometimes fade into legend. Two well-known and imaginative Renaissance stories describe its origins:

1. The first one tells us about Messer Ulivo degli Atellani, a falconer who lived in Milan, who had fallen in love with Algisa, a beautiful daughter of a baker, and had himself hired by her father as an apprentice. To increase sales, one day he tried to invent a dessert: with the best flour in the mill, he kneaded eggs, butter, honey and raisins. Then he baked. It was an amazing success, everyone wanted to taste the “new bread” and some time later the two young lovers married, obviously happily ever after.
2. The second one tells us about the chef at the service of Ludovico Il Moro, in charge of preparing a sumptuous Christmas lunch to which many nobles had been invited. The dessert he had thought for the occasion, however, was forgotten by mistake in the oven and almost charred. Given the chef’s despair, Toni, a young trainee in the kitchen, proposed a solution: «With what remained in the pantry this morning I cooked this dessert. If you have nothing else, you can bring it to the table». The chef agreed and, trembling, put himself behind a curtain to spy on guests’ reactions. Everyone was enthusiastic, and to the Duke who wanted to know the name of that delicacy, the chef revealed the secret: «È il pan del Toni» (It’s Tony’s bread). So it was that, according to the legend, the name “panettone” was born from pan-del-Toni.

Legends aside, what is known with certainty is that the oldest attestation of something similar to panettone is in a register of Pavia expenses dating back to 1599: on December 23^rd of that year, in the list of courses scheduled for the Christmas lunch also appears the expenses for five pounds of butter, two pounds of raisins and three ounces of spices to make thirteen “big loaves”. Remaining in the field of written testimonies, the first concerning the panettone dates back to 1606, when the first Milanese-Italian dictionary provided the term “Panaton”, a big bread that people used to make on Christmas day, while the first written recipe of panettone appeared in “The king of the chefs” by Giovanni Nelli, published in 1868.

The origins of the pandoro

Compared to panettone, the pandoro undoubtedly has more recent origins. Its name derives from “pan d’oro” (golden bread), due to its soft consistency and the golden color of its surface, and its history begins in Verona on October 14^th, 1884, the day on which Domenico Melegatti, founder of the homonymous confectionery factory in Verona, deposited an industrial patent for a recipe of a soft dessert with a characteristic shape of eight-pointed star, which was the work of the artist Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca, impressionist painter who without knowing it realized the first work of food design.

Melegatti’s recipe was the result of a reworking of the levà, a dessert with sugar grains and almonds originally from Verona, to which Melegatti removed the glaze and added butter and eggs to the dough. The dessert was such a success that several local emulators attempted to recreate it, and Melegatti put a thousand lire (which at the time corresponded to a small fortune) for anyone who managed to match his recipe. Despite that, no one was able to get the prize.

Protected recipes and alternative uses

Panettone and pandoro are regulated by an Italian government decree (July 22^nd, 2005) which regulates the production and sale of some of the most traditional Italian baked confectionery products. In this decree, panettone and pandoro are among the products for which the use of specific ingredients and a correct information and transparency on the market is necessary.

Both are often the subject of creative recipes that aim to reduce waste. The pandoro, for example, is a dessert that lends itself well to being “recycled” for breakfast. Its durable softness is very good with jams, spreads and chocolate syrup. When it ages, it becomes the ideal accompaniment for a cup of hot milk, maybe with a small spoonful of honey or cocoa. Panettone, on the other hand, is often used in combination with salty aperitifs, usually based on cured meat and cheeses. At the same time, it can be used to make exquisite desserts and semifreddi.