What is the best artisanal pandoro of 2023? Here – finally – our selection!

The world, at least at Christmas, is divided into two categories: the panettone extremists and the panettone fans Pandoro. The latter was underestimated for a long time, but today this is no longer the case. Pandoro, as we know it, has a relatively recent tradition: the dessert has a year of birth, 1894, and a “father”, the pastry chef Domenico Melegatti, who “patented” the recipe for a dessert made of flour, yeast, eggs and lots and lots of butter.

That of artisanal pandoro was and still is a very rich dough, not at all easy to work with. For this reason, not all pastry chefs who produce panettone try their hand at making the typical dessert of Verona, and for this reason it is considered a sort of testing ground for the best.

Not only that: if the dough, so rich, must be perfectly worked to grow in height and take on the shape we all know, the subsequent phases are no less demanding – from the very long leavening to the cooking, which must take place in a special mould, until to rest after cooking. And it is the details that make the difference: theinfluence of temperaturesthe manual ability of the artisan pastry chef, the choice of raw materials which must be of the highest quality.

And if making a good artisanal pandoro is a complicated matter, choosing it is not easy either. If we decide to leave the mold and the shelves of the supermarket, we must be guided no longer by advertisements, but by labels and our senses: when tasted, pandoro must be soft, not stringy or elasticand must have a buttery scent that envelops and conquers. This is the key ingredient, which must be very fresh, and possibly centrifuged. There are no frills in pandoro, no candied fruit, raisins or dried fruit: its characteristic is simplicity, and for this reason, like all simple things, it must be perfect.

Differences between artisanal pandoro and large-scale retail pandoro

As we were saying, the differences between an artisanal pandoro and one from large retailers can concern various aspects – starting from the ingredients up to the production process, passing through quality and tradition. Here are some differences that are usually found: