Panettone is a typical Italian Christmas dessert. Usually is not made by hand, but as I like the challenge I tried to do it anyway.
As often happens, there are different legends around the origins of this tasty dessert. Among the others, my favourite and maybe the most accredited is the one about the apprentice Toni.
We are in the court of "Ludovico il Moro", lord of Milan in the distant fifteenth century. It was Christmas Eve when the official cook of the Sforza family inadvertently burned the cake. While the cook was in despair, and ready to face his biggest failure in front of his king, the cook apprentice, Toni, was working on something with yeast, flour, eggs, raisins, candied fruit and sugar. Shyly he went to his master and presented his apprentice-piece. Useless to say, the Pan di Toni (aka bread of Toni) and later "Panettone" was a huge success and we luckily still have the chance to taste it during Christmas.
It takes a long time to make Panettone, and it is not the easiest though. I woke up around 5 am and I finished around 1 am or so. Theoretically, I think this is not even a long enough time, but well.. I just wanted to try. The result was not the best, clearly, the Panettone should have been more alveolate, but the taste was on point :) and I was happy enough as a first attempt!