Panettone
Based on Wikipedia: Panettone
The Bread That Takes Three Days to Rise
Peru eats more panettone than Italy does.
Let that sink in for a moment. The world's largest consumer of this iconic Italian Christmas bread isn't the country that invented it, but a South American nation where Italian immigrants landed over a century ago and brought their holiday traditions with them. Peruvians now consume about 1.3 kilograms of panettone per person every year, a staggering amount of sweet, fluffy bread studded with candied fruit and raisins.
But what exactly is panettone, and how did a bread from Milan become a global Christmas phenomenon worth nearly 580 million euros annually?
A Bread Unlike Any Other
Panettone belongs to that rare category of baked goods that requires genuine patience. Not the "wait an hour for the dough to rise" kind of patience. We're talking about a process that unfolds over several days.
The secret lies in how the dough is made. Panettone dough is acidic, similar to sourdough, and must be cured slowly. The proofing process alone—that's the stage where yeast creates tiny gas bubbles that make bread light and airy—takes multiple days. This extended timeline is what gives panettone its distinctive character: an almost impossibly fluffy texture that somehow manages to be both light as air and satisfyingly substantial.
When you slice into a panettone, you'll notice it's shaped like a dome sitting on a cylinder, typically standing about 12 to 15 centimeters tall for a one-kilogram loaf. That's roughly five to six inches of golden, aromatic bread. The dome shape wasn't always standard—it was actually an innovation from the early 20th century that we'll get to shortly.
Inside, you'll find candied orange peel, citron (a large, bumpy citrus fruit that's mostly rind and pith, prized for its aromatic oils), and lemon zest, along with raisins. Importantly, those raisins go in dry. No soaking. This keeps them from becoming mushy and allows them to provide little bursts of concentrated sweetness throughout each bite.
What Panettone Is Not
To understand panettone, it helps to know what it isn't.
It's not fruitcake in the dense, alcohol-soaked, "regift it for the next decade" sense that many people associate with that word. Panettone is light. It's meant to be eaten fresh, ideally within a few weeks of baking. It won't survive for years in your cabinet like some legendary fruitcakes allegedly do.
It's also not pandoro, its Veronese cousin. Pandoro, which translates to "golden bread," is typically baked in a star-shaped mold and contains no candied fruit or raisins at all. It's dusted with powdered sugar that resembles snow, making it look like an edible Alps peak. Same Christmas tradition, completely different personality.
And it's certainly not panettone's Easter counterpart, colomba pasquale. That one is shaped like a dove (colomba means dove in Italian) and is traditionally topped with almonds and pearl sugar. Same enriched dough tradition, different holiday, different form.
From Milan With Love
Every Italian account of panettone's origins points to Milan. The name itself tells part of the story: it comes from "panetto," meaning a small loaf of bread, plus the augmentative suffix "-one," which makes things bigger. So panettone literally means "big bread" or "large loaf."
The oldest certain record of panettone appears in a surprisingly mundane document: an expense report. In 1599, the Borromeo college of Pavia recorded costs for Christmas lunch preparations. The list included five pounds of butter, two pounds of raisins, and three ounces of spices, all given to the baker to produce thirteen loaves for students to enjoy on Christmas Day.
Not exactly a romantic origin story. But that's often how culinary history actually works—through accounting ledgers and shopping lists rather than mythical tales.
By the 18th century, the Milanese illuminist Pietro Verri was writing about "pan de ton," which translates to "luxury bread." The first printed recipe didn't appear until 1853, in a cookbook called "Nuovo cuoco economico milanese" (The New Economical Milanese Cook) by Giovanni Felice Luraschi.
The Bakers Who Changed Everything
For centuries, panettone remained a regional specialty. Then came two Milanese bakers who would transform it into a national—and eventually international—phenomenon.
In 1919, Angelo Motta began producing panettone under his own brand name. But Motta didn't just scale up production. He fundamentally reimagined the bread itself.
Traditional panettone had been flatter, denser. Motta introduced a revolutionary technique: letting the dough rise three separate times over nearly 20 hours before baking. This triple-rise method created the tall, domed shape and ethereally light texture that we now consider standard. When you picture panettone, you're picturing Motta's innovation.
A few years later, around 1925, another baker named Gioacchino Alemagna adapted the recipe and launched his own competing brand. What followed was a baker's war—fierce competition that drove both companies to industrialize their production and distribute their panettone across all of Italy.
Both brands still exist today, though they've changed hands several times. Nestlé acquired them together in the late 1990s, then sold them to Bauli, an Italian bakery company based in Verona. The competition that Motta and Alemagna sparked, however, permanently transformed panettone from a Milanese luxury into an Italian Christmas staple affordable enough for everyone.
The Great Migration
When Italians emigrated, panettone traveled with them.
The most dramatic example is South America. Lombard immigrants—people from the region around Milan—brought their Christmas bread tradition to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Brazil. In these countries, panettone became so thoroughly adopted that it's now simply part of the local Christmas landscape, served with hot cocoa or liquor during the holiday season.
In some South American regions, panettone has actually displaced the king cake, that ring-shaped celebratory bread traditionally eaten on Epiphany and during Carnival season. When a foreign food manages to edge out an established local tradition, you know it has truly taken root.
The story of Antonio D'Onofrio illustrates how panettone adapted to new environments. D'Onofrio, son of immigrants from Caserta in southern Italy, launched his own panettone brand in Peru. But he couldn't simply replicate the original—candied citron and lemon weren't readily available in Peru. So he substituted candied papaya. He licensed a modified version of the Alemagna formula and its packaging style, creating a distinctly Peruvian panettone that's now owned by Nestlé and exported throughout the continent.
This kind of adaptation is how foods become truly global. The core identity remains—the dome shape, the fluffy texture, the studded fruits—while the specifics adjust to local ingredients and tastes. Spanish speakers call it panetón or pan dulce. In Brazil, it's panetone (note the single 't'). Different names, same celebration.
The Numbers Behind the Dome
Today, Italian manufacturers produce a staggering 117 million panettone and pandoro cakes every Christmas season. That's roughly two of these celebratory breads for every Italian citizen, though of course many are exported worldwide.
The industry is worth 579 million euros annually. That's more than half a billion euros flowing from flour, butter, eggs, candied fruit, and raisins, shaped into domes and shipped around the world.
You'll find panettone in Italian communities throughout the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. It's become standard inventory in specialty food shops and increasingly in mainstream supermarkets during the holiday season.
How to Actually Eat It
In Italy, panettone is traditionally cut into vertical wedges, like a cake. The dome shape means each slice gets a bit of the airy top and the slightly denser base.
It's typically served with sweet hot beverages—think coffee, hot chocolate, or tea—or accompanied by sweet wines. Asti and Moscato d'Asti are classic pairings, their light effervescence and fruity sweetness complementing the bread's buttery richness without overwhelming it.
Some regions take things further. In parts of Italy, panettone is served with crema al mascarpone, a cream made from eggs, mascarpone cheese, and sweet liqueur. Imagine a lighter, boozy version of cheesecake filling alongside your slice. The combination of the fluffy bread and rich cream creates something approaching dessert transcendence.
The Fight for Protection
There's an ongoing effort to obtain legal protection for panettone, specifically Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Denominazione di Origine Controllata (DOC) status. These are European Union certifications that would legally restrict what can be called "panettone" based on where and how it's made.
Champagne has this protection—only sparkling wine from the Champagne region of France can legally use that name. Parmigiano-Reggiano has it too. The idea is to protect both producers who follow traditional methods and consumers who want assurance they're getting the authentic product.
So far, these efforts haven't succeeded for panettone. The bread has already spread too far, been adapted too many ways, become too universal to be reined back into a single protected definition. In some ways, that's a compliment—panettone is a victim of its own success.
Three Days of Patience
Perhaps what's most remarkable about panettone is how poorly suited it is to our modern expectations of instant gratification.
This is a bread that cannot be rushed. The acidic dough must cure. The three rises must happen at their own pace. The proofing takes days, not hours. In an age where you can get almost anything delivered in under an hour, panettone insists on its own timeline.
And maybe that's part of why it has endured. The holidays are supposed to be about slowing down, about traditions that stretch back generations, about taking time for the things that matter. A bread that takes three days to rise feels appropriate for a celebration that only comes once a year.
The next time you slice into that tall, domed loaf, you might think about the Borromeo college students in 1599, receiving their Christmas loaves. Or Angelo Motta, figuring out that three rises would transform a flat regional bread into something that could conquer the world. Or the Lombard immigrants, carrying their traditions across oceans to new homes where their grandchildren would grow up thinking of panettone as simply what you eat at Christmas.
All of that history, all of that patience, baked into a single fluffy slice.