Mini Panettone (Vegan & Gluten Free!)

Panettone is a delicious, sweet yeast bread studded with candied fruit that is traditionally made in Italy for Christmas or New Year’s. I kept seeing recipes for it online, and decided to give it a try. I made mini ones because you need to order special paper holders to make full-size Panettone, but you can use parchment liners from your grocery store for these little ones. I love how they turned out, and they are the perfect size to eat a whole one by yourself!

Like any yeast bread, these Panettone do take a little bit of time due to the rising times, but they are really very simple to make! If you use a digital kitchen scale to weigh your ingredients and you follow my step-by-step directions, I promise you can make beautiful Panettone even if you’ve never made any kind of bread before. I have included a bunch of photos in this post, but this is only to show each little step clearly so a beginner can follow along. Here are the ingredients you will need to make these rolls:

I made my own candied fruit this year and I highly recommend it over the store-bought kind. You can find the recipe on page 21 of this free cookie ebook. Using part raisins is more traditional, but I really liked the colors of the candied fruit. You can sub whatever dried or candied fruit that you prefer as long as you use the same amount by weight.

Cut up your candied fruit into raisin-sized pieces and use about a tablespoon of your 680 grams of flour to lightly dust the pieces to keep them from sticking together. Set aside for now.

Line two jumbo muffin tins with parchment liners. These liners were actually sized to fit standard muffin tins, but I stretched out the pleats a little bit, then gently pushed the bottom of each liner into a well in the tin until it fit perfectly. Set these aside for now.

Add your flour, the larger amount of sugar, and the vitamin C crystals to a medium-sized mixing bowl and whisk them together. Then, make a well in the flour mixture and add the yeast and the small amount of sugar to the well. (If you do not have vitamin C crystals, look in the recipe notes below for directions on how to substitute vinegar and lemon juice instead.)

Heat your seltzer water to 90 degrees Fahrenheit and pour it into the well.

Let stand for five minutes so the yeast can activate.

Use a sturdy spatula to stir everything together:

Make an indentation in the dough, then add the extracts, vegan butter, and salt. Let them sit in the indentation for now and do not stir them in yet:

Place your bowl in a clean trash bag, twist the end of the bag, and tuck the end under the bowl. This creates a proofing box in which your dough can rise in ideal conditions. Set a timer for 75 minutes.

Your dough will rise quite a bit:

When your timer goes off, use a hand mixer with dough hooks on high speed, or a stand mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed to mix your dough for about 1 1/2 minutes, until all of the butter is incorporated.

Add your candied fruit and orange zest. Use a sturdy spatula to scrape down the bowl, then fold the dough with the spatula about 20 times to be sure the fruit is evenly mixed into the dough.

Put the bowl back in the plastic bag and set a timer for 30 minutes:

When your timer goes off, remove the bowl from the plastic bag. Your dough will be very puffy:

Use a sturdy spatula to cut into the dough and fold it about 15 times. You want to knock the air out of the dough so it can rise evenly in the final rise after shaping.

Divide your dough evenly between the twelve liners. (I weighed mine to be sure they were all the same, and each piece of dough weighed 136 grams.)

Here’s what each piece of dough should look like before the final rise:

Place your pans in the plastic bag to rise. This will take about 20 to 45 minutes, depending on the temperature and humidity. Set a timer for 20 minutes to check on them, and then recheck every 10 minutes until they are ready.

While you wait during this last rise, place a large, shallow pan of water on the lower rack of your oven, then preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Check on your water level when your rolls are getting close to being ready to bake. It needs to be at least 1/4″ deep when your rolls go into the oven, so add more water if necessary.

You also need to get your milk mixture and coarse sugar ready. Mix the plant milk and the aquafaba together in a small bowl and set it next to your sugar to use in the next step.

This is what your dough should look like when it is ready to be baked. It should be quite puffy and there should be some tiny bubbles beginning to pop on the surface:

Gently brush some of the milk mixture over the top of each roll, then sprinkle it with a generous amount of coarse sugar:

Bake the 2 pans of rolls for 36 to 38 minutes at 400 degrees until the tops are golden brown:

Let the Panettone cool in the pans for a couple of minutes before removing them to the rack to finish cooling:

Let your Panettone cool to just warm, then serve with vegan butter and enjoy! (The leftovers also make fabulous toast!)