Vegan Christmas Pandoro Cake

Christmas is due to come! If you wanna celebrate like me in a totally cruelty free way let’s surprise your beloved ones with this vegan cake!

A eight-pointed star, the sweetest treat: let’s talk about the ‘pandoro’, one of many Christmas’ iconic symbols together with the rival, panettone.  A star with eight points, the sweetest and softest there is: let’s talk about the pandoro, one of the sweet symbol of Christmas together with the ever-present rival, the panettone. Both from ancient italian traditions, are among holiday’s favorite dessert to be enjoyed by themselves or together with some delicious cream.  At the Habsburg court, the ‘pandoro’ was called the “Vienna bread”, while according to other stories its name come from the word “pan de oro”, which is “bread with gold” that was served at wealthy Venetians’ houses. It is curious to know that Pandoro was designed by Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca, an impressionist painter; the form, together with the recipe of the dough, was deposited at the patent office on October 14, 1894 by Domenico Melegatti, owner of the homonymous confectionery industry. Nowadays, as most of our food, pandoro is made in factories which use lots of preservatives and animal products. If you wanna still enjoy the taste of it and you are fond of baking I want to challenge you with this recipe. It takes some time but it’s definitely worthy. So grab a spoon and a fork and let’s get started!

WHAT YOU NEED

To list the ingredients for the preparation of this vegan pandoro, we must distinguish each that are used to develop 3 separate doughs.

FIRST STEP:

• 50 grams of Manitoba flour
• 10 grams of sugar
• 8 grams of yeast, a teaspoon of soy lecithin
• 60 ml of warm water

SECOND STEP:

add to the first one you have prepared yet

• 200 grams of Manitoba flour
• 25 grams of sugar
• 2 grams of yeast
• 30 grams of vegetable margarine
• warm water as required

THIRD STEP:

add together with the last dough obtained

• 200 grams of Manitoba flour,
• 100 grams of sugar,
• a teaspoon of soy lecithin,
• vanillin
• a pinch of salt

WHAT TO DO

FIRST MIX 

Melt the lecithin in half of the water needed and the yeast in the water left together with a pinch of sugar.  The process is rather simple and fast. It really takes very little time. Now put all the ingredients together, beat with a whisk and let the dough to rise for at least an hour, putting everything in a warm place.

SECOND MIX  

All you have to do is use the first dough and add it to all the other ingredients listed for the second phase. If you use dry yeast, remember it must be reactivated. This operation is really easy, because you just have to add a little water and some sugar to it.  Form a dough and let to rise for about 1 hour is a warm oven (after you switch it off)

THIRD MIX  

Dissolve the lecithin in warm water, assemble all the ingredients, including the second dough, and mix well for a long time.  Let it rise for another hour in a warm place and then place it in the fridge for another 60 minutes.

FINAL PHASE  

Take the dough from the fridge and form a square that is about a centimeter high. In between, place the vegan margarine with your hands and close, like sort of a letter folding 3 times then wrap the dough in a transparent film and let it rest in the refrigerator for about half an hour.  This procedure must be repeated two more times. Take a typical baking mold of pandoro (I used a pudding cake mold using half of the dough obtained and made two). Put everything in the switched off oven, leaving to rise for about 12 hours. The next day put the oven at 180 degrees and place the pandoro on the lowest grid. As time goes by, each 10 minutes lower the temperature, bringing it first to 160 and then to 150 degrees. After about 15 minutes the dessert will be ready.

Now just leave to cool down at sprinkle some caster sugar in it.

Congratulations! You can now call yourself a professional pastry chef! Feel free to share it with your beloved ones, it’s gonna be a success!