L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2019 www.italoamericano.org 14 L'Italo-Americano LIFESTYLE FASHION FOOD ARTS ADVICE MARIELLA RADAELLI T he Italians enter the Christmas spirit with a fragrant, yeasty slice of panettone — Christ- mas isn't Christmas without it on our festive tables. We can never get enough of it, especially for us who are Milanese. We have a near-cultish devotion to panet- tone when the Christmas season kicks in. But how many Italians know that an increasing number of American people are also enjoy- ing the pleasure of an indulgent panettone? And it's not only those from the substantial Italian- American communities. This new panettone culture has caught on in California and other parts of the US. In cities that boast the country's best delis and some of the best bread such as NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle, the panet- tone has begun to measure up. Today tasting a slice of Italy's fruity Christmas favorite in a pastry shop is becoming part of the American urban scene. In San Francisco, noted chef Roy Shvartzapel serves his own panettone at his restaurant FromRoy on 575 Mission Street. Californians also buy it through his virtual luxury bakery in Los Gatos. Mentored by Iginio Massari, a great panettone master from Brescia, Roy has spent years obsessing and perfecting what he calls "the Mt. Everest of the bak- ing world." Roy is pursuing his ambitious dream to sell his panettone in Milan, where the iconic Christmas specialty origi- nated several centuries ago. Or what about the superlative panettone served at Emporio Rulli in historic downtown Larkspur in Marin County? Pastry chef Gary Rulli learned the art of panettone-making in Milan. This year for the first time in the glorious history of panettone, a true baker from Milan, Davide Longoni, went to California to produce one entirely made in California. Longoni is a baking guru born in the Monza and Brianza province, who lives in Milan where he has three very well established bakeries (Panificio Davide Longoni) located in the Porta Romana area. Longoni is taking whole grains in new directions. He grows and harvests them in the proximity of the Chiaravalle Abbey outside Milan and in the Abruzzo region to obtain flours that connect to his bakery's ethos: producing a healthier, bet- ter-tasting and more environmen- tally friendly bread. "Bread is joy, art and revolu- tion," he says. His modern way of understanding bread as an agricultural product induced him to found PAU, an association of Panificatori Agricoli Urbani, or urban agricultural bakers. Recently, in California Longoni led a small team of Italian bakers and pastry chefs to craft a panettone that represents a new wave in bakery research. The project was conceived by Carlo Mari and Carlotta Borruto, cofounders at California Innovation, an orga- nization located in San Francisco, and also cofounders at Italia Innovation based in Verona, Italy. The panettone was produced in San Mateo at Kitchentown, a startup incubator that helps develop, commercial- ize and launch impact-driven food products. Two other experts involved in the project with Longoni are Matteo Piffer, a baker from Rovereto who is in charge of the business development at his fam- ily bakery Panificio Moderno, and Mauro Iannantuoni, head pastry chef at Ernst Knam in Milan. Iannantuoni opened his pastry shop in Brooklyn, NY and also worked at Armani Restaurant in Manhattan for a while before making his way back to his home country to con- tinue pursuing his love for the products of his land. "Together with Carlo and Carlotta, we selected the best Californian producers of raw ingredients to craft a panettone entirely made in California but prepared according to the Milanese artisanal pastry recipe and heritage," says Longoni — or mother yeast, corn flour, eggs and butter, and contains only sul- tana raisins and candied orange, citron and lemon zest. The three Italian bakers use stone-milled flour by Cainrnspring Mills, organic eggs from Clover, a co-op located in Sonoma County, and low- processed organic butter pro- duced by Straus Family Creamery, a dairy located in Marin County. Their panettone has been leavened using a natural yeast started in San Francisco with the Lactobacillus Sanfranciscensis, which gives sourdough bread its characteristic taste. "The 'canditi' we used are fantastic," remarks Longoni. "They are very aromatic, so Californian. Oranges and lemons were candied by Michael Recchiuti Confectionary." Sultana raisins and sugar were carefully sourced by Bi-Rite mar- kets, an institution in San Francisco. Longoni and his team bake three variants of their panettone. Besides the classic traditional Milanese recipe, they also made a chocolate and lemon version, and a panettone al caffè, where coffee is contained in the dough. They employ chocolate from Dandelion, a premium chocolate producer of San Francisco, and coffee from Verve Coffee Roasters, a coffee company from Santa Cruz. "This year we produced a small quantity of our panettone that was available at Bi-Rite mar- kets," he says. "It was an experi- ment, a pilot project." Next year, the quantity will increase to some 5,000 panettones that will give Californians a chance to get used to finer panettone made by authentic Italian masters. "Americans are showing a real interest in Milanese panettone. They simply love it," says Longoni. He adds that FromRoy was somehow "a good source of inspiration because he is an American pastry chef who really bakes a truly Italian-style panet- tone in California." Yet, the iconic panettone remains an emblem of the Milanese patisserie. "Panettone consumption was at first recorded in a manuscript written by a humanist, Giorgio Valagussa, in the late 1400s that is today preserved at the Ambrosian Library in Milan," explains Stanislao Porzio, a panettone connoisseur who is the founder, organizer, and promoter of Re Panettone, a competition that since 2008 has been gather- ing the top pastry chefs in the panettone category from across Italy. The event, held every November in Milan, crowns the "King Panettone." Valagussa worked at the Davide Longoni came to California to produce panettone with local produce (Copyright: Brambilla Serrani) Festive California: new land of King panettone? Continued to page 16

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