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Well, I finally finished making panettone. It's taken four months to get to this point (no joke, although I have to laugh when I think of all the hours of kneading agggghhhh :) ) 

Hope you enjoy the recipe, although I realise it comes too late for this year's festive season. 

It's here in my blog: http://foolishpoolishbakes.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/panettone/

Happy holidays and wishing y'all a fantastic new year!

Cheers,

FP

Sometimes, I end up with large holes throughout my bread. I'm not talking about the nice irregular holes we all know and love, but a giant hole right through the middle of the loaf. I'm not very precise in my baking methods, so I can never pin down what I do differently or incorrectly to achieve this. Does anyone know what causes this (over-proofing, poor shaping technique, low/high hydration, etc.)?

On another note, I made a delicious loaf of Pain au levain (Leader, Bread Alone) today. If you're not familiar with this recipe, it calls for a levain developed over four days. The final dough gets a two hour fermentation, a 35 minute bench rest, and a final two hour proof. This dough always has me on the edge of my seat: two hours for proofing seems like a ridiculously long time. It always surprises me, though, and pops right up in the oven. This is a very toast-able bread with a tighter crumb and mild sourdough taste.

If anyone has any suggestions about the giant, loaf-length holes I'm experiencing, I would love to hear about it!

Eric

A few years ago, I read a chapter in "It Must Have Been Something I Ate" where Jeffrey Steingarten discussed the lengths that he went through to master Pane Genzanese.  The story was so inspiring (and hilarious) that I, who at the time lived in a tiny town in Upstate New York, far from a bakery where one could score a decent loaf of French or Italian bread, decided to buy the BBA, got a big and heavy baking stone, and threw myself headlong into yet another hobby that would become an obsession and threaten to consume ALL of my precious and limited spare time. 

Before then, my bread baking had been limited to a one and a half pound loaf bread machine.  But, since that reading, I have baked many and varied loaves of bread and visited this site countless times.  I finally worked up the nerve to try this BIG, nine and a half cups of flour, four and a half pound loaf, and I can report on it, tonight.  

Impressive in it's appearance, the crust is pleasantly bitter and crunchy with a very open crumb, and would be enough to bring to a quite large dinner party.  (With only two adult diners and one infant in our house, I will be giving away half of this loaf to a neighbor in order to save me from myself...)  Today was a practice run for baking bread to bring with us to my wife's family for Christmas.  Yes, the time has come to bake for the extended family, and I am both excited and terrified...

Day of baking will be 9-10 hours, so I start before I have breakfast and even coffee!  There will be plenty of time for eating and drinking during the rise.

Recipe for Pane Genzanese adapted from Jeffery Steingarten's "It Must Have Been Something I Ate":

For the biga:

Half cup of day-old bread dough.  (If you don't have that, mix 2.25 oz. AP flour, pinch of instant yeast, 1/4 tsp. kosher salt, and 1.5 oz water.  Knead and leave covered at room temperature, overnight, to ferment for the next day's baking.)

8 oz. water

9 oz. AP flour (2 cups)

Stir together half the flour and all the water.  Gradually work in the day-old dough, breaking it up and working it in piece by piece.  When it is well blended, work for another three to five minutes, then set in a bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rise to double (about 5 or 6 hours.)

To build the bread:

The batch of biga

3 and 1/3 cups water

31.5 oz. AP flour (7 cups)

1 and 1/4 tsp instant yeast

1 and 1/2 tbl salt

And, about a cup of wheat bran flakes, reserved.

Mix half the flour with the water, and gradually work in the biga, broken into pieces.  When smooth, add rest of flour, salt, and yeast.  Mix thoroughly and then knead until fully developed (about fifteen minutes with the dough hook on my Kitchenaid stand mixer.)

Move dough to a bowl, cover bowl with plastic wrap, and let rise by 25%, which will take about an hour at warm room temperature.

Pour out onto a VERY heavily floured counter.  Should form a circle 12-14 inches across.  Rest for ten minutes.

While resting, preheat oven and your baking stone (at least 14 inches to a side) to 500 degrees.

Flour a couche or a clean non-terry cloth dishtowel and spread 2 tbl bran flakes over it.  

Shape dough into a loaf by folding the far end 2/3 over towards yourself, and tamping that seam, firmly, with your fingers.  (The resulting seam will be in the shape of a big dougy smile.)  Work your way around the loaf like that, pulling 2/3 over toward the opposite end.  Complete that circuit, twice, to get the loaf smaller and and the skin tighter.  Invert onto the couche,and cover the loaf with another 2 tbl of the bran flakes, so that they will be on both the top and bottom of the loaf.  Cover loaf with the half of the couche that the dough is not resting on (or a second dishtowel, if there is not enough to cover the top) and let rise in a very warm place for 40-45 minutes.  I boil a cup of water in the microwave, then leave the hot water inside, put the couch on a 12 inch pizza box and put it inside the microwave, too, while leaving the door slightly ajar so that the light stays on, providing even more heat.  This keeps the temp right around 80, and the moisture keeps a crust from forming.  Dough will rise by about an inch to let you know it's ready.

Now, cover your peel with three more tbl of bran flakes.  Transfer dough to peel.  This requires that you invert the dough off the couche onto your hand, and then invert, again, onto the peel.  This move will be the most difficult thing that you do all day, so do it carefully.  

Steam the oven, and now move the dough to the hot stone.  Spray the bread with about twenty mists of water, close the oven door, and drop the temp to 450.

Bake for about an hour and ten minutes, total, and to an internal temp of 210.  At seven minutes, open the oven and spritz the bread a good twenty more times.  At forty minutes, carefully rotate the loaf one hundred and eighty degrees for even baking.  

When finished, cool on rack at least two hours before you succumb to temptation and hastily grab your bread knife while your wife puts the baby to bed and gently reminds you that you haven't mailed your Christmas cards, yet, that you had promised to mail no later than Tuesday.  And, did you really have the time to spend the whole day baking a "practice" loaf of bread, anyway?  Promise through cheeks filled with crust that you will get the cards out first thing in the morning, and tell her to hurry back and join you for the feast that awaits.

Enjoy your Pane Genzanese plain, with a meal, in place of a meal, or dipped in olive oil with freshly grated Parmesan cheese and a little bit of ground black pepper.  (My favorite!)  Yum!! 

Thank you, Mr. Steingarten, for introducing me to bread baking, for keeping it real on Iron Chef America, and for giving me such a precise and easy to follow recipe, both for this bread, and for Neopolitan-American Pizza.  (That will be another post.)

Johnster

As many folks here know, for the past two years I've had the honor of working for Mercy Corps, a humanitarian aid organization based in Portland, Oregon.  Even if you are just a casual visitor to The Fresh Loaf, you may have noticed the Mercy Corps banners and tiles that I run for free here from time-to-time.

Once a year or so I feel it is worth making a case for Mercy Corps and other charitable causes here, so let this be my annual appeal to The Fresh Loaf community. This is my own personal appeal, not anything written by, endorsed by, or paid for by Mercy Corps. And, yes, I'm abusing my administrator privileges by posting this here rather than in my blog or the "Off-Topic" forum.  Please indulge me this one time a year.

2008 has been a busy year at Mercy Corps. In the spring we responded to both the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in Southern China. Our programs in both place continue today with our teams helping locals replant rice fields, restore clean drinking water to their villages, and rebuild their local economies. Since then we have also responded to the terrible floods in Honduras and the growing cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe. We continue to work in more than thirty countries worldwide, helping those in the greatest need build secure, productive and just communities for themselves and their families.

Unfortunately, 2008 has been a very tough year for charities and non-profits. For the first eleven months of the year the US elections drew away people's attention from charitable activities. Rather than organize a local food drive or raise awareness of global crisis, many people worked and raised money for the candidates and party of their choice. That level of participation in and excitement about this election was wonderful but, as I said, it made it a very difficult fundraising environment for charities and non-political causes.

Now we all watch the economic crisis worsen. Many of us have watched the values of our houses or investments shrink; we feel less certain by the day that our jobs are secure. This time of year is typically the most active time of year at charitable organizations, but charities from the Salvation Army to The Red Cross are reporting that giving is off steeply this year.

Which is highly unfortunate, because this year the need is greater than ever. In most communities in America, food banks are serving record numbers of people. Around the globe, disasters, both natural and man-made, continue to make issues such as food scarcity and basic nutrition ongoing problems.

Any way you can help charities or community groups this year will be appreciated. If one of the things you want to give thanks for is The Fresh Loaf, please consider making a donation to Mercy Corps or a similar organization. Even a small donation, such as the purchase of an inexpensive Mercy Kit as an alternative to a traditional Christmas gift, helps fund programs for those who need them most.

Mercy Corps, obviously, isn't the only way to help, it is just the organization I know best and whose commitment to serve I can personally vouch for. Ringing bells for the Salvation Army, giving extra food to a local food bank, volunteering for Meal on Wheels, spending an afternoon at a local church or synagogue that feeds the homeless are all wonderful ways to help out. And while hunger is an ongoing problem that is of great concern to me, plenty of other institutions could use your support as well. The word on the street is that cultural institutions such as art museums, historical societies, and symphonies are seeing some of the worst drops in giving this year since they can't even make the case that supporting them helps ease the effects of the current economic downturn. But their closure would be a tragedy for the cities and communities we live in.

So please consider being as generous as you can afford to be this year. Take the time to think about ways your celebration of the holidays can make your community or the world a better place and don't forget to count your blessings.

For those folks who regularly support charities or volunteer their time, thank you so much for your support. Your gifts mean more than ever this year.