Pandoro
Verona's Christmas cake: a tall eight-pointed star of deep yellow butter dough, baked plain and buried in icing sugar at the table.
Photograph credit: Pandoro 3 by Ramagliolo9 at Italian Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Build the Meal Around Pandoro
- Mascarpone cream
- Spumante
- Christmas breakfast
Photograph credit: Pandoro cut 01 by Kuebi = Armin Kübelbeck · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
How to Cook Pandoro
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Mix the flour, yeast, sugar, yolks, whole eggs and warm milk to a dough and knead 15 minutes until smooth and elastic.
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Add the salt, vanilla and lemon zest, then work in a third of the cold butter until absorbed. Cover and prove 2 hours.
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Knock back and work in the second third of the butter, kneading until the dough is smooth again.
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Work in the remaining butter and the cocoa butter, cover tightly and refrigerate 12 hours.
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Butter a 1 kg pandoro mould and dust it with caster sugar, tipping out the excess.
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Shape the cold dough into a smooth ball and drop it seam down into the mould.
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Prove 5 hours at room temperature, until the dough reaches the rim.
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Bake at 150°C / 300°F fan / 170°C / 340°F / gas 3 for 45 minutes, covering the top with foil if it darkens, to an internal temperature of 92°C / 198°F.
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Cool in the mould 30 minutes, then turn out onto a rack and cool completely.
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Shake the icing sugar and vanilla together in the bag and coat the pandoro at the table.
Related guide: Prep, cook and total time.
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A Few Notes
Cold butter, in three stages, and keep the dough below 24°C / 75°F.
Sugar the mould, not flour. It is where the crisp shell comes from.
Half an hour in the mould before turning out, or the points break.
Keeping What's Left
Sealed in a bag at room temperature for 10 days. Freezes 2 months.
Questions and Answers
How long does Pandoro take to make?
1 hour of preparation and 45 minutes of cooking, plus 19 hours 30 minutes of proving, the overnight cold ferment and cooling in the mould, so allow 21 hours 15 minutes from start to finish. The method also needs time for cooling completely, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 10.
What's in a Serving
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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