Seriously, I’ve made more bread in this past week than I probably have my whole life (minus banana or cranberry breads). Here it is though, the last bread recipe for this challenge! I saved this one for later because I needed to order panettone molds and I wasn’t sure they’d be here earlier on in the challenge. This is a well known Christmas bread and I didn’t think about the fact that everyone else was ordering these around this time frame too, so I just ordered the first one I saw that would be here in a few days. It wasn’t until they arrived that I realized I had ordered mini panettone molds so I adapted this recipe to accommodate the smaller molds.

I found several different recipes online but this one from Master Class seemed to be the more straightforward (this would come back to haunt me a little…). I found my dough was actually a little too dry rather than too sticky so I ended up putting a little extra water in and then kneaded it by hand rather than in the stand mixer since it didn’t seem to be coming together very well. It was nice that there was a note mentioning this would not double in size to avoid me panicking; however, after the hour and a half it hadn’t risen at all. I pulled my husband in for advice and he recommended warming the oven and letting them rise in there for the second half. I figured, at this point I’m more than halfway through the process so I might has well see how things turn out right?

They did rise a little during the second half of the rising process but I could already tell these weren’t going to come out correctly. I wasn’t about to try and do this again so I kept going and put them into the oven so I could at least complete the challenge; even if the final product wasn’t any good. They barely rose so you can imagine how dense the bread was when I finally cut into it and ate it. I’m sure it would have had a wonderful taste with the fruit and all had it been more light and airy but I’ll just have to find out another time. It’s quite disappointing to go to all that effort for such poor results, but I’m also grateful I’m 11 days into a 12 day challenge and this has been the only fail so far.

I’m not quite sure what happened with this recipe, but I’d recommend using something else. I’d like to try this bread again but I will likely go for a more trusted resource like King Arthur so keep an eye out for that redo in the near future. As a side note, if you’re wondering what is or isn’t a good bread recipe, my husband bakes quite a bit and recommends using a recipe that uses volumes and grams since that’s generally more accurate than just 1 cup, etc.

Recipe Used: Master Class