On a bright, cold Sunday in November, the eccentric grandeur of the Palazzo Castiglioni on Milan's Corso Venezia is briefly eclipsed by a curious event taking place on its lower floors: The Panettone World Cup.
For the uninitiated, a panettone is a tall, domed, cylindrical fruitcake and a cornerstone of the Italian Christmas tradition. It's made via a days-long process using a fermented yeast called lievito madre, which gives the panettone its pillowy texture, delicate scent and slight tang.
As is the way with the Italian table, panettone's history is studded with lore. But according to writer and academic Alberto Grandi, the cake was flat, unremarkable and unaffiliated with Christmas until the early 20th century and the intervention of the Motta food company, who gave it a rebrand and a makeover, popularising the shape we know today.
In turn, a resistance to mass production emerged, and a culture of craftsmanship took root. "After a bizarre backwards journey," Grandi told the FT in 2023, "panettone finally came to be what it had never previously been: an artisanal product."
This year's PWC is the fourth iteration since 2019, and an Italian has taken the top prize at each of the first three. But the 2024 edition welcomes competitors from Australia, Brazil, Peru, Japan and beyond, and the air is thick with the possibility of an international upset. Fortuitously, hopes of a UK victory rest on the shoulders of an Italian.
Francesco Coratella is the executive pastry chef at London's Birley Bakery, panettone's spiritual home in the UK. Alongside executive head of bakery and pastry Vincent Zanardi, he began making panettone for the bakery a few years ago, starting with just a few hundred at Christmas 2022, but expects to sell over 4,000 this festive season.
"Our panettone is more citrusy than the traditional recipe," he explains, days before the competition. He has been tweaking his recipe for months, adjusting to Cup rules. Birley Bakery's panettone has an almond-studded, craquelin crust, which is not traditional, and is therefore forbidden.
"With a competition like this," Coratella says, "it's the small details that make the difference." Three days later, the corridors and salons of the Palazzo are packed with the great and good of the panettone world: millers, bakers, fruit growers, palette-knife specialists, grand-looking maestros in crisp chef whites and towering toques.
The Blend arrives in time to see Coratella's introduction to the salon, and receive a slice of his panettone. It is wispy and bouncy and tastes of honey and marmalade and apricot jam. "Great scent!" whispers Zanardi approvingly.
"You're looking for the attributes that the ideal panettone should have," explains PWC judge and Harrods executive pastry chef Markus Bohr. "First, the outside: the dome [should be] evenly formed, then you cut it in half and see that the fruits are evenly distributed. Then you take a slice and see how the crumb bounces back, because it tells you something about how engaged the gluten was during the making. Then you smell it. Ideally, you have the perfect balance of slight acidity from the fruit, and a vanilla underpinning."
At 5pm, everyone gathers to hear the final verdict. First, the sub-prizes for the best panettone by a non-European chef (Yasuda Tazumi of Japan) and for the best chocolate panettone (Pasquale Iannelli of Calabria), before the lights finally dim and a hush falls over the room. The winner is… Ton Cortés… of Spain! Applause erupts and cries of "Viva Espańa!" fill the room as the runners-up console one another and smile in that way only a runner-up can.
Even the Italians are magnanimous, and none more so than Coratella, who warmly concedes that Cortés' panettone is, indeed, superior. But there are 4,000 people in London who might disagree…
GOOD TO KNOW
The earliest record of panettone's existence dates back to the 16th century, though its true origins are diffuse. Some believe it was created by a lovelorn nobleman who used the sweetly enriched loaf to woo a local baker's daughter, while others suggest it was named after Toni, a lowly but resourceful cook working at the court of a Milanese duke.
