Panettone Gets a Healthy Upgrade

Add Panettone, one of Italy’s most cel­e­brated sea­sonal cakes, to a grow­ing cat­a­log of new olive oil-based bak­ing inno­va­tions.

Pastry chefs and olive oil pro­duc­ers in Italy are show­cas­ing their new panet­tone cre­ations in time for the hol­i­day sea­son when this spe­cialty is enjoyed across the coun­try.

In Puglia, the south­ern Italian region renowned for its olive oils, a national con­test called Olea Dulcis (“Sweet Olive” in Latin) has cel­e­brated the extra vir­gin olive oil panet­tone for the first time.

“Panettone is tra­di­tion­ally made fol­low­ing strict dis­ci­pli­nary stan­dards, which require but­ter as the main fat,” Luigi Cremona, a food and wine critic over­see­ing the Olea Dulcis event, told Olive Oil Times.

“In 90 per­cent of cases, the high-qual­ity but­ter used by Italian pas­try chefs is not Italian,” he added. ​“The idea behind panet­tone with olive oil is to cre­ate a cake that bet­ter rep­re­sents our national iden­tity.”

The road to the new panet­tone

Replacing but­ter with extra vir­gin olive oil means inno­vat­ing a cen­turies-old tra­di­tion rooted in the ​“large bread” first appear­ing in 16^th-cen­tury north­ern Italy.

“We began work­ing on the recipe for the new panet­tone in 2022,” said Nicola Olivieri, owner of the award-win­ning patis­serie-lab­o­ra­tory Olivieri 1882 in Veneto, north­ern Italy. ​“It took us over a year to find the per­fect bal­ance of extra vir­gin olive oil, and we are now fully sat­is­fied with the results.”

“The pri­mary moti­va­tion behind this deci­sion has been our cus­tomers,” he added. ​“Many of them have been request­ing alter­na­tives to clas­sic panet­tone and tra­di­tional but­ter-leav­ened pas­tries that are suit­able for indi­vid­u­als with lac­tose intol­er­ance.”

The award-win­ning extra vir­gin olive oil pro­ducer Frantoio Bonamini in Veneto part­nered with the local pas­try fac­tory Pasticceria Zerbato to cre­ate its first PanettOlio for this sea­son.

“Our goal is to ele­vate the value of extra vir­gin olive oil, show­cas­ing it not only as a healthy food but also as a ver­sa­tile ingre­di­ent that enhances every course of a meal, from antipasto to dessert,” said owner Sabrina Sartorari.

The mak­ing of the new EVOO panet­tone

The pas­try chefs at Zerbato are sub­sti­tut­ing but­ter with extra vir­gin olive oil in a one-to-one ratio.

“Still, you must con­sider that the whole of olive oil is fat, while in but­ter, the fat part is approx­i­mately 72 per­cent,” Sartorari said. ​“As a con­se­quence of such extra vir­gin olive oil use, the panet­tone is incred­i­bly soft, light and fluffy.”

“The most sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between mak­ing an extra vir­gin olive oil panet­tone and a tra­di­tional one lies in the knead­ing process,” she added. ​“For the extra vir­gin olive oil ver­sion, knead­ing takes more time, as the dough needs to absorb the oil fully.”

Olivieri agreed. ​“We’ve def­i­nitely faced chal­lenges incor­po­rat­ing the fats into the gluten net­work, espe­cially because we use a sig­nif­i­cant amount of olive oil to replace the but­ter,” he explained.

Choosing the most suit­able extra vir­gin olive oil is cru­cial for achiev­ing the per­fect result.

“Using robust extra vir­gin olive oils in pas­try mak­ing can feel too strong or over­pow­er­ing, given the del­i­cate nuances of the cake itself,” Sartorari said. ​“Since we pri­mar­ily pro­duce mild extra vir­gin olive oils, we opted for our own San Felice.”

“Using it allows us to fully replace but­ter and tran­si­tion from an ani­mal fat to a veg­etable fat, with all the asso­ci­ated pos­i­tive and health ben­e­fits,” she added.

Lorenza Vitali, an Olea Dulcis orga­nizer, called but­ter ​“extra­or­di­nary” for bak­ing but said olive oil allows for more ver­sa­tile fla­vor schemes.

“Butter dom­i­nates and enhances the other ingre­di­ents in the cake,” she said. ​“When you taste tra­di­tional panet­tone, you fully expe­ri­ence its intox­i­cat­ing and mar­velous but­tery aroma.”

“On the other hand, olive oil gives more room for the fla­vors of the leav­ened cake and the flour to shine,” Vitali added. ​“Using a mild extra vir­gin olive oil allows the other ingre­di­ents to take cen­ter stage.”

The mak­ing of an EVOO panet­tone

Making panet­tone at home requires sig­nif­i­cant exper­tise in man­ag­ing the ingre­di­ents and mas­ter­ing the leav­en­ing and bak­ing processes.

One of the most chal­leng­ing steps is work­ing with the sour­dough starter, which adds a broader com­plex­ity of fla­vors com­pared to easy-to-use alter­na­tives like baker’s yeast.

Replacing but­ter with extra vir­gin olive oil often requires a longer prepa­ra­tion time.

The cor­rect amount of olive oil can vary depend­ing on the cho­sen extra vir­gin olive oil, its fla­vor pro­file, and how eas­ily the dough absorbs it dur­ing knead­ing.

Some exper­i­men­ta­tion is nec­es­sary to achieve a per­fect home­made extra vir­gin olive oil panet­tone.

The extra vir­gin olive oil panet­tone by Italian olive oil pro­ducer Olio Carli includes extra vir­gin olive oil (eight per­cent), nat­ural sour­dough starter (six per­cent) (wheat flour, water), can­died orange peel (orange peel, glu­cose syrup, sugar), wheat flour, fresh egg yolks from free-range hens, raisins, honey, brown sugar, water, salt, and nat­ural fla­vor­ing.

Many other ingre­di­ents can be added or par­tially replace the more tra­di­tional ones, such as vanilla bean or extract, cit­rus zest (such as orange or lemon), can­died cit­ron or other dried fruits like cher­ries, apri­cots or figs, choco­late chips or cocoa nibs, almond flour or finely ground nuts, liqueur (such as rum, amaretto, or marsala) to soak the fruits, milk or cream, spices like cin­na­mon or nut­meg and top­pings such as glazed almonds or pearl sugar.