I tasted Pandoro three years ago when a colleague brought some after visiting her parents in Italy. I fell in love with this rich bread with the feather light crumb immediately. After some Internet search I found a Pandoro recipe from the Simili sisters on Chili und Ciabatta . Its a great recipe I made many times since this day. It is a time consuming recipe but the result is worth every second you spend in kitchen.
And the I saw a sourdough pandoro on Wild Yeast and I knew that this is the bread I have to bake for Christmas.
This pandoro is made with a sweet starter, a sourdough that is feed more frequently for two days to enhance yeast growth. My lovely boyfriend had to do babysitting my sourdough and feed it every four hours while I was working. He did a great job and the starter was vigorous rising after every feeding. On the 23. December I did the dough and the bread rose overnight. My pandoro need about 18 hours to reach the top of the pan and I let it rise the last 4 hours on 30°C! Continue reading
Michael Suas recommend in “advanced bread and pastry” to create a sweet starter to bake sweet bread like Panettone or Pandoro. Due to rising this starter on high temperature and many feedings, the growth of wild yeast is encourage as wells as the growth of homfermenting lactobacilli while bacteria producing acetic acid are inhibited by the high temperature. This produce a very vigorous but jet very mild tasting sourdough.