The Traditional Pandoro - Everything You Need to Know

The pandoro is a traditional dessert from Verona that shares its fame with Panettone. It differs from the latter as it has no filling and the only addition to the classic dough of eggs, butter, and flour is vanilla icing sugar.

The shape has 5 points, which originally were 8, when an early version of what is now called Pandoro was created by Austrian pastry chefs, some of whom worked in northern Italy, including Verona. Its origins thus date back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire between the 18th and 19th centuries. The dough, as today, had a high content of butter and eggs, which gave it the classic straw-yellow colour inside. The butter itself also promoted generous rising, giving height to the dessert.

According to other sources, the origins of Pandoro would be purely "aristocratic", as this dessert was covered with a very thin layer of gold, hence "golden bread", which graced the tables of noble Venetian families.

However, there is a third hypothesis regarding the history of Pandoro, which would draw inspiration from a star-shaped dessert, also of Veronese origins, called "Nadalin", and in this case, the skill of Austrian pastry chefs was also involved. The dessert is traced back to the second half of the 13th century and was created to honour the investiture of two noble families of Verona (the Lords of Verona and the Della Scala). The Nadalin had 8 points and was glazed. By the end of the 19th century, however, the glaze disappeared and the points became 5, thanks to the pastry chef Domenico Melegatti, who invented the recipe as we know it today, with a long preparation and rising times extended over several days for an unmistakable taste.