The saying goes: "If a girl baked a pandoro for me, I'd marry her." I'm not completely sold on marriage, but the idea of eternity gets me. Together forever, a slice of pandoro as wedding vow and ring. A much nicer thought than Romeo and Juliet of Verona, united for eternity by a lousy vial of poison.
Making a pandoro takes more or less an entire day...13 hours of watching after it like a child, kneading it, rousing it between rest periods, adding ever more ingredients so that it will grow up big and strong and ...see what I mean? Now, somebody else just might buy a commercial pandoro, sagely foregoing a wedding veil in favor of the powdered sugar one that comes in a neat little packet with each and every store-bought cake. Somebody else, yes. Me,no!
7:00 AM- Combining in a mixing bowl 3 oz. of flour, 1T. sugar, 1 egg yolk, 2 oz. brewer's yeast mixed to a soft paste with a bit of lukewarm water, I preheat the oven to about 75 F degrees (40 c), preparing a cozy cradle for the dough, which should be left to raise for two hours under a cloth. I leave the oven door propped ajar to allow the air to circulate.
9:30 AM- OK, nap time's over. Wake up your little sleepyhead, now twice its size, and give it a snack of 5 oz. flour, 1 T. softened butter, 3 T. sugar and 3 egg yolks. Mix together for 10 minutes and tuck it again for another 2-hour nap in the oven.
12:00 Noon- Well, one to lunch turned down, one dental appointment cancelled and its clear I won't be working today. But in the back of my mind I hear an echo: "If a girl baked a pandoro for me, I'd marry her." ... And so in the name of love, I add another 14 oz. flour to the dough, 2 oz. butter, 1 egg and 3 more yolks. Down goes the mix switch on the mix master and then it's off to the oven for another two hours.
14:30 PM - The dough beckons. I roll it pout with the rolling pin and give it a drink by adding a generous half-glass of cream drop by drop, then add the grated peel of one lemon and 1 tsp. of vanilla extract. I weigh it to check on its development. And, lo, two hefty pounds! Using a wooden mallet, I pound the dough out to a square which I dot with flakes of butter (5 oz. for 2 lbs. of dough). I fold the dough over the butter, pound it out, fold it, pound it out, fold it. By this point I'm beginning to identify with dough! 30 minutes time out, then into the oven with the dough and into bed for me.
16:00 PM - I take up the hammer and think poor innocent dough: I pound it out, fold it, kneading it in this fashion three times before leaving to rest a further half hour.
16.45 PM - I'm beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel - the end of the day and the end of my nerves. I butter and dust two pandoro baking forms. I roll out the dough, divide it in two and roll each half into a smooth ball, roll them out, place them in the forms and put them in the oven to raise fully.
19:00 PM - Children grow and so the pandoro dough, rising to the rim of the baking forms, which I place covered next to a heater to prevent radical temperature changes. Increase the oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake the pandoro for 40 minutes, reducing the temperature to 325 degrees after 20 minutes.
20:00 PM - I remove the pandoros from their forms and set on cake racks to cool. Weight at birth? 1 lb. 10 oz., not bad! When cool, I add the finishing touch, a thin veil of powdered sugar. And now, here HE comes.
"Look what I did, all by myself."
"No way!"
"Oh, yes I did!"
"Well, well then..." and slices the cap clean off one of the twins, digging a hole into which I forlornly stick a finger. How exhausting the way to a man's heart is through his stomach".
