Panettone: It’s high time you tried this Italian specialty for Feast Day this year

We shall start Musings on Italy with one of my favorite things: bread! Most everyone loves bread, but Italian bread is bread on another level. And panettone is Italy’s signature Christmas bread, and I believe it’s high time you tried this Italian specialty for your feast day this year. You never know, it might become a new favorite tradition, just like it did many, many years ago in Italy.

Back in olden times, panettone became a feast day dessert because its ingredients were hard to come by for all. White bread (called mica) was reserved for wealthy people while the poor were doomed to millet bread. The only exception was Christmas day when all the social classes could eat the same bread, the so-called pan de sciori, or pan de ton, made of pure wheat and stuffed with butter, sugar, and zibibbo (an ancient vine whose grapes, when dried in the sun, add intense sweetness to bread).

The bread became consecrated with Christmas in the 1700s when the Cisalpina Republic favored the opening of ovens and pastries, the bread known then as “pan del ton” or luxury bread. 

The one thing researchers agree on is that panettone’s origins are Milanese, but no one agrees on its birth story. In fact, several legends surround its creation.

One legend places panettone’s birth in a convent in Milan, when a nun, having only a few ingredients on hand to make a cake for her sister nuns, decided to add them all to the bread dough: eggs, sugar, candied fruit, and raisins. Before putting it in the oven, she engraved it with a cross on top to bless it. 

Another legend, which says the first time panettone was mentioned in writing was the 15th century in Milan, at the time of Ludovico il Moro, the prince who ruled as the Duke of Milan from 1494 to 1499. A hawker in the service of il Moro created an ancestor of panettone when, together with a baker friend, decided to add a lot of butter to a classic bread dough.

An additional legend says a cook, working at the court of Ludovico il Moro, created a recipe for a particular Christmas banquet dessert that burned. To quickly produce something else, the cook took some already made dough and added candied fruit, eggs, sugar, and raisins.

My research tells me that yes it was a cook in the House of Sforza, but it was before Lodovico’s time as Duke of Milan, that it originates in the 1470s.

What’s this pane e coperto charge on my bill?
When dining out in Italy, you’ll often see a pane e coperto charge on your bill. Just know that when an Italian restaurant charges you for bread, it’s not per basket. It’s usually per person and it can range from 1.50 euros per person up to 2 or 2.50 in pricier, more-touristy places like Venice or Sorrento, which can be quite an added charge when dining with family. Though some regions, like Rome’s Lazio region, passed laws that say this pane e coperto charge is illegal. Not all restaurants abide by this. And know that you aren’t the only ones paying it, most Italians do as well. Such is life, they say and pay. But here’s an exception. This charge should be written on the menu. Small print/on the back? No matter, it should be there. If it’s not? Make a fuss, and the charge gets taken off.

At that time, a tutor in the Sforza household wrote a manuscript that mentions the cook’s pane, a cook named Antonio—Toni for short. So, yes, perhaps panettone means Toni’s bread, but perhaps it was the grandfather/father (Antonio) who passed the recipe down to his son—considering how back then everyone named their children after themselves or a previous family member—and it wasn’t established as a Christmas dessert until Lodovico il Moro, so pleased with its results, had it made every Feast Day, thus creating an Italian tradition that continues today.

One might even go further back to the ancient Roman Empire, where the Romans created a special rising-dough bread recipe that used honey. It doesn’t resemble the panettone of today, but early Romans are responsible for the principles behind the bread, and this knowledge was passed down through ages until it ended up in the city of Milan…in young Toni’s hands.

So, this manuscript places the origin of panettone in Galeazzo Maria Sforza’s time (Duke of Milan from 1466 to 1476) and thus my Caterina (in the beginning of my novel) surely would have sampled it.

I’d love to hear your comments below on which legend you like best. Until next time on Musings on Italy, happy feasting. 😉