holiday bread

Panettone is one of those things I never understood until I reached years of discretion--it seems to be a dessert, yet it contains zero percent chocolate?  No thanks.  Then you become a grown up lady and you realize that it's not dessert, it's breakfast.  A breakfast that happens to contain three sticks of butter and a dozen eggs and a goodly amount of sugar.  It's times like these I thank the DNA fairy that I have no problems with cholesterol. 

I'm so happy that that the geniuses behind Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day have posted their excellent panettone recipe online.  The only real change I make to the recipe is to boil the water and soak the dried fruit in it, and then add the fruit-water mixture when the recipe says to add the water.  This makes the fruit almost dissolve into the bread.  Also, I don't have special panettone pans so I just use plain old loaf pans.

Stale panettone makes killer french toast and bread pudding.