The best artisan Panettone made in the capital is from the Gruè pastry shop. He decreed it “Panettone Maximo”, the 1st Panettone Festival in Rome, organized by the online magazine MangiaBevi and RistorAgency, to celebrate a handcrafted product that embodies all the warmth of Christmas and which has long since ceased to be the preserve of Lombard pastry chefs. The pastry shop in Viale Regina Margherita managed by Marta Boccanera and Felice Venanzi is doing very well: this month it also managed to rank as the best pastry and ice cream bar of the year at the 2019 Barawards which were held at the IBM Studios in Milan, distinguishing itself many competing for its excellence in products, customer care and hospitality.
In the competition that took place at the Boscolo Circus Maximus, a Boutique Hotel with an event space that develops inside the Palatine Hill and the Roman Walls, right in front of the Circus Maximus, Marta Boccanera and Felice Venanzi had to measure themselves against the best Roman pastry chefs winning the first prize both for the traditional panettone and for the chocolate one, on big names in pastry such as D'Antoni since 1974 at Casilino, Cantiani in Via Cola di Rienzo, Le Levain, Boulangerie pastry shop in Trastevere and Bompiani, Walter Musso's "conceptual" pastry shop and for the chocolate panettone on Cantiani, Nero Vanilla, Pompi and Barberini.
All, according to the jury, made up of Giuseppe Amato, pastry chef of the La Pergola restaurant, Fabrizio Fiorani, best pastry chef in Asia 2019, Fabrizio Donatone, World Pastry Champion 2015, Angelo Di Masso, pastry chef, Attilio Servi, leavening pastry chef, Luigi Cremona, food and wine critic, Rossano Boscolo, chef and patron of Boscolo Circo Massimo, have expressed a product of rare perfection. In addition to the winners, the participating pastry shops were: Achilli Caffè, Antonini, Giuffrè, Marazza (Priverno), Panificio Nazareno, Panzini (Subiaco), Patrizi (Fiumicino) and Santi Sebastiano e Valentino.
On 22 July 2005, the Ministry of the Economy and Finance issued a decree entitled "Discipline of the production and sale of certain bakery confectionery products" in which it specifies the mandatory and optional ingredients and the production process of some typical sweets including panettone, pandoro, colombe and ladyfingers. The same decree defines panettone as a "soft baked confectionary product, obtained by natural fermentation from sourdough, with a round base shape, with a characteristically cracked and cut upper crust, a soft structure with elongated honeycombs and a typical aroma of sourdough leavening”.
The main ingredients must be: wheat flour; sugar; category “A” chicken eggs or egg yolk or both, in quantities such as to guarantee no less than 4% by weight of yolk; percentage of butterfat not less than 16; raisins and candied citrus peel (oranges and citrons), must not fall below the threshold of 20%; natural yeast consisting of sourdough.
The production process begins with the preparation of the sourdough mother yeast starting from a compound consisting of water and wheat flour, acidified by the fermentative activity of yeasts and lactic bacteria from a mixture used in the previous production cycle. As soon as the sourdough has tripled its volume, the eggs are added, butter, sugar and flour and everything is left to rise for about 12 hours at around 30°C until it has quadrupled.
Once the definitive dimensions have been reached, the compound undergoes a second processing, with the further addition of eggs, flour, butter, sugar, raisins and candied fruit and after being placed in the molds it is left to rise again. During the second leavening phase the scarping is carried out, an operation by which a cross-shaped incision is made on the surface of the dough in order to favor the swelling of the panettone. After cooking, for about 1h at 180°C, the dessert is left to cool upside down for at least 10 hours.
