Al Percival

Sounds great! I wonder if adding some VWG would help develop a loaf that could hold its structure more? I might give this a go but perhaps bake in a loaf tin as it sounds like a good sandwich bread.

Thanks - good tips!

Many thanks to @JoaoBertinatti and @teonzo for the tips. I managed to find some flour with 13% protein and supplemented it with vital wheat gluten to 14.5%. Increased mixing time for the final dough to about 15 minutes and a robust gluten development before starting to add the sugar, eggs and butter (total mixing time for the 2nd dough was about 45 minutes). Came out as expected! About 10 hours proving and then 60 minutes baking. I need to work a bit on my presentation and order some panettone cases - will post pics next time!

Thanks Teo. I'll wait to hear back from @JoaoBertinatti about his experience with adding vital wheat gluten and then I might try again with the artificially enriched flour. Here is Australia there is very little choice in flours, despite Australia being quite a big wheat producer. It shows in the quality of the baked goods and breads available which are mostly pretty dreadful.

Thanks Teo Here in Australia they don't publish much info about the flour except the obligatory nutritional info. The flour has 11.5% protein content - that's all I know at the moment (I've sent an email to the manufacturer). I can add vital wheat gluten to increase the gluten content as an option however?

Good info Joao. Did your failures also collapse to the point where if you dragged a finger through the dough there was no pull and no evidence of gluten (ie like a cake batter?) The MB recipe says to mix to medium gluten development after the addition of the vanilla and flour. I think I mixed for about 5-6 minutes as the dough was already well formed after the long initial fermentation (and it had tripled in size) and felt like most of my doughs do at that stage. With the ones that worked, did you continue to add the extra gluten or did you find it wasn't needed. After it was clear that my gluten had dissolved I did a few experiments in batches - which included adding some more flour and vital wheat gluten but at that stage I don't think anything was going to fix it.

Thanks Chris I kept mixing for about 10 - 15 minutes after the gluten dissolved and there was no change to the structure - if anything it got even weaker. I even refrigerated the dough for about 6 hours to see if it would reform - but no. The consistency was closer to mashed potatoes than dough. Out of curiosity I then took some of the 'batter' (as it was then) and added some baking powder and baked it in a loaf tin to see if it would create a worthwhile cake. The consistency of the cake was like it had been made from a gluten free recipe - there was no crumb or structure and it just crumbled despite the high hydration. Here in Australia we don't have a much choice over flours - the main one we can get is 11.5% protein which works well enough for most of the breads I do. I've ditched the dough now. It might be a while before I try again unless I can be sure I understand what caused this.

Newbie member here looking for some assistance! I've just tried the full Panettone recipe in Modernist Bread - and had a disaster which I've never experienced before and still trying to work out why. I've made the Panettone in Bread Bakers Apprentice loads of times and while it isn't as light and airy as I would like, it's a good flavour - so I thought I'd gave the full MB version a go to see how the texture (and taste) varied with the full multi stage build and levain only recipe. All was going well until I started to mix the final dough - once I started to add the egg yolks then it looked like the gluten network started to break down. I kept going in the hope that things would 'come right' again - but no - over the course of a couple of minutes the dough went from a medium gluten development to something that felt like a thin paste with no gluten development apparent. It felt more like a thin cake batter than any dough I've ever worked with. I went on and added the butter and let it mix for a while longer on a low setting but it didn't change the texture or start to develop any structure. I've been looking to see what could cause this but I'm stumped. I've made the mistake before with brioche dough of adding the butter before the gluten network was properly developed (and ended up with something that felt more like cake than brioche), but in this case I hadn't even started adding the butter before the dough started breaking down and it browk down very quickly. It hadn't even been mixing for very long - and it was only only setting 1 on the KitchenAid so I can't believe it had been overworked. I'd love to know what I can do to avoid this happening again - and to understand what would cause a dough to break down like this.