It’s not truly Christmas until it arrives at the table: traditional panettone, a soft architectural creation that embodies the history, technique, and soul of Italian pastry-making. From North to South, every workshop guards its own secret, its own yeast, its own way of honoring the classic recipe.
If creative panettone surprises and delights, the traditional one reassures, embraces, and tells stories. It is the essence of celebration: a dessert both democratic and refined, ancient and contemporary, capable of uniting generations and territories.
Why does traditional panettone continue to move us? For its deceptively simple nature, its perfect structure, that fragrance of citrus and fresh butter that immediately evokes family, intimacy, and tradition.
Here are some of the most extraordinary interpretations of classic panettone from the makers who render it, still today, a timeless masterpiece.
Tiri 1957
Among the names that have most contributed to rewriting the history of traditional panettone is Tiri 1957, whose Traditional Panettone is considered one of Italy’s best, hailing from the south.
Soft, fragrant, highly digestible, it embodies the company’s vision: high-quality Australian raisins, Lucanian Staccia orange, and a process that has revolutionized classic standards.
Tiri was the first to introduce the 3-Phase Dough Method, surpassing traditional two-phase logic. This innovative 72-hour technique allows for an airier structure, a broader aromatic profile, and a unique melt-in-your-mouth quality. A panettone that doesn’t simply respect tradition, but elevates it.
Pasticceria La Primula
Some pastry chefs work as artisans, others as researchers. Mattia Premoli, owner of Pasticceria La Primula, belongs to both categories: scientific precision and artistic sensitivity coexist in his nationally recognized leavened creations.
His Traditional MADRE Panettone is a hymn to the purity of the classic recipe: candied orange and citron peel, raisins, excellent butter, and 100% mother yeast, without emulsifiers or preservatives. The dough is luminous, intense yellow, airy—testament to the yeast’s vitality. On the nose, it releases complex aromatic notes: lactic, fruity, honey, flowers, citrus—thanks also to lemon paste and late-season Ciaculli mandarin. On the palate, it’s a crescendo: first a decisive bite, followed by balanced, enveloping sweetness.
Fornasetti x Davide Longoni
When design meets great baking, the result is captivating. For the sixth consecutive year, the celebrated Fornasetti atelier entrusts its panettone to Milan’s Davide Longoni bakery, a guarantee of quality and craftsmanship.
The Fornasetti panettone rigorously respects the Milanese recipe: sultana raisins, candied orange and lemon peel, mother yeast, and stone-ground flours.
This year, however, it’s enriched with two unprecedented touches: Jamaican Hampden rum and vanilla pods, for a warm, vibrant, surprising aromatic profile.
The packaging is a work of art: a cylindrical box in embossed paper decorated with the “High Fidelity” motif, created by Piero Fornasetti in the 1950s. An enigmatic cat, curled among books, watches over the panettone and guards the most poetic spirit of Christmas according to the Atelier: irony, mystery, and beauty.
Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura
The panettone from Gucci Osteria da Massimo Bottura has become an object of desire for lovers of great leavened treats.
The Traditional Panettone remains the signature creation: soft, fragrant, made with raisins, candied orange peel, and natural Madagascar vanilla, presented in an elegant tin box decorated with the Herbarium motif, echoing the Maison’s iconography.
Alongside the classic are two interpretations that expand the concept of “contemporary tradition”: Strawberry and Chocolate, where freshness and depth meet in a perfectly balanced formula, and the Vegan Panettone, a 100% plant-based offering that welcomes everyone without sacrificing fragrance and softness.
It’s a tribute to Italian excellence, where high pastry-making, design, and storytelling coexist in impeccable balance.
Infermentum
To celebrate its first ten years, Infermentum dedicates a special box to the dessert that changed its founders’ lives.
The Traditional Panettone recipe, treasured since the beginning, is born from three days of processing and natural leavening. The ingredients are carefully chosen: Calabrian candied Washington-quality orange, raisins, and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla.
Alongside the classic, the limited-edition box includes two variants that have gained a devoted following: Three Chocolates and Figs, Apples, and Walnuts. Three different stories, three nuances of the same philosophy: slowness, authenticity, and a pastry-making approach that doesn’t follow trends, but its own idea of quality.
Images: Brands respectively
