Pandoro is Patience’s Reward: The narrative needs very few words. The recipe, six eggs, some flour, butter, honey, vanilla, cocoa butter, sugar, a super hearty sourdough starter, and instant yeast (you will need the kind that is tolerant of osmos, like SAF Gold). Blend together (over 2 hours of mixing, your machine will get tired) following Biagio Settepani’s careful instructions courtesy of Artisan Baking Across America by Maggie Glezer. Yes, the dough will stretch to the floor. After letting it rise overnight (thank god for floor heaters) the starburst pans are baked into an eggy, vanilla dream. If only everything could smell like this.
We used two different pans, an Italian pandoro pan and the Portuguese pan made of tin. The porcelain one browned a little more (see photo 6) but that was the only difference. The great irony of pandoro is that it has a shelf life of about a month. Ha.