QUALITALY 142

October/November 2024 X MAGAZINE to increase sales by offering something different, Ugo adds a large amount of butter and sugar to the bread dough. The new recipe is particularly popular and ‘Toni’s new bread’ quickly became famous in the city. The legend also has another happy ending: thanks to this success, Ugo manages to marry the sweet girl he was in love with. The last legend is about a nun, Ughetta, who, to cheer up her sisters’ Christmas, decided to add sugar, eggs, butter and candied citron to the bread dough. To bless it, she drew a cross on the dough with a knife. The nuns appreciate it and once again, word of mouth was incredibly fast: the Milanese started to bid the convent to take home some of that special bread. Each of the two legends about the origin is also followed by a different explanation of the origin of the name panettone. Some say it derives from ‘pan de Toni’, others from the expression ‘pan de ton’, meaning a loaf of fine bread. Then there are those who consider panettone to be an accrescitive of panetto, i.e. ‘panett’ in dialect, and those who lean towards a derivation from ‘ large bread’. FROM LEGEND TO LARGE-SCALE ADOPTION The preparation of panettone is present in nineteenth- and twentieth-century cookery books, but over the years it began to move away from the household, moving to the artisan workshops and pastry shops of Milan, which were originally small and family-run. Here, the same panettone production was preserved and remained virtually unchanged until the turn of the 20th century, when the first entrepreneurial initiatives began to appear, mechanising the manufacturing processes to achieve larger- scale production. The first factories emerged in the first half of the 20th century and to them we owe the application of the ancient method of natural leavening, the revolution in dough and the iconic dome-shaped dough. They were a great success right from the start, not only in Lombardy’s capital city but also in neighbouring regions. Thanks to the promotion of big industry, in the 1970s Panettone’s fame spread beyond the borders of northern Italy, finding its way onto tables all over the country. PRODUCT SPECIFICATIONS AND VARIANTS In 2005, a decree was issued: ‘’ Specifications for the production and sale of certain bakery confectionery products, a production specification for obtaining the reserved denomination‘’, adopted by both the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Agricultural Policies. The decree - greatly desired by Unione Italiana Food, the first association in Italy for direct representation of food product categories - officially defines the production standards for festivity leavened products: panettone, pandoro and colomba. The cornerstones of the panettone recipe recognised and protected by the specifications are: natural leavening, the use of fresh eggs and butter, and guaranteed minimum percentages for sultanas and candied fruit. For each of the three leavened festivity cakes, the necessary quantities of eggs have been defined, which must be strictly fresh; those of butter (panettone must contain at least 16%) and of candied fruit and sultanas, for which the minimum percentage for the Milanese cake is 20%. If the Milanese panettone is the symbol of Milan, so much so that it has obtained the De.Co.- Denomination of Municipal Origin, over the years a number of regional variants have also appeared. There is, for example, a Piedmontese version, particularly soft and fluffy, but with a typical low shape, with an amber-coloured hazelnut glaze. Val d’Aosta can also boast their own version of this Christmas cake: the Valdostan micóoula, a black bread enriched with chestnuts, figs, walnuts and raisins. Pandolce is the Genoese panettone, rich in sultanas, candied fruit and pine nuts, whose leavening time ranges from 18 to 20 hours, offered in both tall and low versions. In Valtellina, on the other hand, the Pan di fich or Bisciola is famous, whose ingredients include figs, as well as dried fruit, butter and eggs, in some cases flavoured with grappa. ITALIANS AND PANETTONE, AN ENDURING LOVE AFFAIR In 2023, the production of the Milanese cake recorded an increase of +3.5% in volume (37,647 tonnes) and +6.5% in value (EUR 237.9 million) compared to 2022. 2023 was also a positive year for pandoro, another Christmas leavened product par excellence, which recorded growth in both volume and value, respectively +4.1% (32,073 tonnes) and +5.9 (€165.2 million) over 2022. Over the years, panettone and pandoro have become synonymous with made-in-Italy products all over the world, registering increasingly strong interest in foreign markets as well, as shown by the 2023 export figures: 19% of total production was destined for international sales, worth 112 million Euros. The main European countries to appreciate festive leavened products are: France, Germany, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Switzerland; overseas, the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil and Argentina (source: Unione Italiana Food). WATCH OUT FOR THE PRICE If, on the one hand, market data speaks of a good product that is appreciated by Italians, on the other hand, panettone is also having to reckon with increased attention to price on the part of consumers. A phenomenon that goes hand in hand with the rising cost of ingredients, as Fabio Ravaschio, Sales Director of Bonifanti , a Piedmontese company that has been making panettone and colomba since 1932, explains. ‘For cocoa, we have recorded unprecedented increases in recent years. In addition to these price rises, there are also freight costs required to get this commodity to Europe and all the problems linked to climate change, which affect, for example, the production of sultanas. Then we have problems related to eggs caused by the spread of bird flu, which has compromised the production of fresh eggs, among other things the only ones that can be used in the panettone recipe, leading to a 20% increase in price. Regarding butter, production is currently also limited at European level and, as a result, there are significant price increases. All these increases, of course, in turn affect the final price of the product. TRADITION FIRST The traditional Milanese panettone has been joined over the years by a number of variants, with particular combinations, but between the classic and the new flavours, which do Italians prefer? ‘They still choose the traditional panettone, with orange and citron,’ says Ravaschio, ‘but they also show interest in the Piedmontese version, with almond and hazelnut glaze. The chocolate- fruit combination, such as chocolate and pears, is also successful. In recent years, pistachio and caramel panettone have undoubtedly been two major trends, but we consider them to be temporary. As far Fabio Ravaschio , Direttore commerciale di Bonifanti