This is an easy recipe for vegan panettone, the Italian sweet fruited bread traditionally eaten at Christmas.
The recipe is for a lemon or chocolate chip version, but you could add all sort of other things – orange zest, chopped apricots, rum-soaked raisins…
I have used strong flour, rather than cake flour, in this recipe, along with lemon juice and apple puree in a bid to maximise the air pockets. The result is certainly light and airy, and the texture is very soft and brioche-like.
Unlike most of the panettones you can buy in the shops, which can be stored for ages, this is a bread and should be consumed within a few days of baking. Wrap it well as soon as it is cool, to keep it soft, unless you plan to eat it straight away.
If you do leave it unwrapped, it will dry out but still taste good. The pictured lemon loaf had been left out unwrapped for two days, so I toasted it! The chocolate chip loaf was wrapped and cut the following day – you can see how soft it is in the photos.
vegan panettone…
Ingredients
- 80 g peeled, cored dessert apple (around one medium apple)
- zest and 1 tbsp juice of a small lemon
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tbsp finely ground flaxseed
- 2.5 tsp dried yeast
- 100 ml soya or other non-dairy milk
- 65 g white or golden sugar
- 250 g strong white bread flour + extra for kneading
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 25 g vegan margarine
- 60 g lemon or mixed citrus peel (candied)
- to glaze: 1 tsp margarine and 1 tsp maple syrup
for the chocolate chip version
- leave out the lemon zest (keep in the juice)
- add 2-3 tsp vanilla extract instead of 1tsp
- substitute 60 g dark chocolate chips for the lemon peel
method
- First prepare the apple puree (you could use shop-bought apple puree if this is something you happen to have). Slice the apple and cook it down with two tablespoons of water for a few minutes in a lidded pan. Set aside to cool.
- Heat the milk and one tablespoonful of the sugar gently in the microwave or in a pan until it is warm but not hot. Then whisk in the dried yeast and set aside for ten minutes or so.
- Add the lemon juice and zest, vanilla extract, and the ground flaxseed, to the cooked apple. Blend with a hand blender or in a mini stand blender to form a thick puree.
- Sprinkle the salt in the bottom of a large mixing bowl and then add the flour, margarine and the rest of the sugar. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and add both the apple and the yeast mixture.
- Stir with a spoon until it is starting to come together as a dough, then transfer to a floured surface and knead with your hands for around ten minutes.
- The mixture will be quite sticky and you will need to keep adding flour. Add only as much as you need to stop it sticking to the surface.
- Put the dough in a clean, lightly oiled bowl and leave it to rise in a warm place for 1.5 to 2 hours. I generally put the oven on very low (about 25 degrees) and let the dough prove in there. It should more or less triple in size. (The rate at which the dough rises is dependent on temperature, so it may take longer.)
- While the dough is rising, lightly oil and line a tall-sided pan or cake tin (the pictured loaves were made in 6″ (lemon) and 7″ (chocolate) diameter tins).
- Return the dough to a very lightly floured surface, add the chopped peel (or chocolate chips), and knead just until everything’s evenly distributed.
- Form the dough into a ball and place in the tin. Leave it to prove in a warm place for around an hour, by which time it should have expanded at least as much as it did with the first rise.
- If you are proving and baking the loaf in the same oven, simply turn up the heat to 180°C/360°F at this point and bake it for 35-40 minutes, depending on how quickly your oven heats up. Otherwise, transfer to a pre-heated oven and bake for around thirty minutes.
- To glaze the loaf, melt the margarine and syrup together and brush over the top of the loaf about ten minutes before the end of its baking time.
- Allow to cool before cutting. If you are not eating it on the same day, wrap it well to keep in the moisture (or toast it!).
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