Mini Panettone (Vegan & Gluten Free!)
These mini Panettone are delicious and perfect for Christmas or New Year’s. They are lightly sweet and flavored with orange zest and candied fruit. Like any yeast bread recipe, it does take a little bit of time due to the rising times, but these rolls 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.
Servings: 12 rolls
Calories: 340kcal
Ingredients
Rolls
- 680 g Freely Vegan All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour
- 125 g Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Vitamin C Crystals (see recipe notes for substitution)
- 12 g Active Dry Yeast
- 6 g (1 1/2 tsp) Sugar
- 575 g Seltzer Water
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1/2 tsp Orange Extract
- 28 g Vegan Butter
- 14 g Salt
- 210 g Mixed Candied Fruit and/or Dried Fruit
- 30 g Plant Milk
- 30 g Aquafaba (liquid from a can of chickpeas)
- 3 to 4 TBS Coarse Sugar
Instructions
- 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 tulip or lotus parchment liners. These liners are usually sized to fit standard muffin tins, but you can stretch out the pleats a little bit, then gently push the bottom of each liner into a well in your tin until it fits perfectly. Set these aside for now.
- Add your flour, the 125 g 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, then 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.
- 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.)
- 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 will also need to get your milk mixture and coarse sugar ready while the dough is rising. Mix the plant milk and aquafaba together in a small bowl and set it next to your sugar.
- You will know your dough is ready to be baked when it looks quite puffy and there are some tiny bubbles beginning to pop on the surface. (See the photos in the blog post to see what this looks like.)
- 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. Place the pans of baked rolls on a cooling rack.
- 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!)
- If you want to freeze leftover rolls, place them in a ziplock bag to store them. Reheat a roll on a plate in your microwave on 50% power until it is hot all the way through to the center. This will take about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. If you want to use your leftover rolls for toast, I recommend slicing the rolls prior to freezing. I cut each roll into six or seven equal slices, then place them in a ziplock bag in the freezer. You can toast the frozen slices on the rack of your toaster oven until they are browned to your taste.
Notes
- This recipe was developed with Freely Vegan flour. Because it works very differently from other gluten free flours, it is unlikely that this recipe will work properly with another flour. The one exception to this is if you are using one of these DIY flours that are also made with The Plant Based Egg and without xanthan or guar gum. (Most of these blends should work, but read the description for each blend as a few do not make good yeast breads.)
- If you do not have any vitamin C crystals, you can substitute a combination of vinegar and lemon juice instead. To do this, reduce the seltzer water to 545 grams, then add 15 g of distilled vinegar and 15 g of lemon juice to the bubbly yeast mixture after the five minutes and before you stir everything together.