Pandoro

Pandoro is a tall, star-shaped sweet leavened cake from Verona, baked in a rigid metal mould and finished with a shower of vanilla-scented icing sugar. There is no fruit in it, no raisins and no candied peel and no chocolate, and that absence is the definition rather than an omission.

The same 2005 Italian decree that governs panettone sets pandoro's rules: natural sourdough leavening, at least 20% butter and at least 4% egg yolk, with candied fruit and raisins expressly forbidden.

The crumb is deep yellow, fine and much softer than panettone's. It slices cleanly instead of pulling into strands, and it tastes of butter and vanilla rather than citrus and sourdough. Its name comes from pan de oro, golden bread.

Close to a very good brioche, but lighter and sweeter: buttery, vanilla-heavy, with almost no acidity. Where panettone tastes like enriched bread, pandoro tastes like cake, and it dissolves rather than chews.

The icing sugar is not decoration. It is vanilla-scented and comes in its own sachet, and shaking the cake in the bag coats every ridge of the star, so each mouthful gets a dusting of sweetness against the plain crumb.

Italians who dislike candied peel, a large and vocal group, choose pandoro for exactly this reason. It is also the one children reach for, which tells you where it sits on the sweetness scale.

Take the cake out of its bag, drop it back in with the sachet of vanilla icing sugar, close the top and shake. That is genuinely the instruction, and in Italy it is usually given to a child.

Serve at room temperature, never chilled. Cut it horizontally into discs about two centimetres thick, so every slice comes out as a star; stack the discs back up with each one rotated slightly and you get the Christmas tree that appears on Italian tables every December.

Pandoro takes fillings far better than panettone. Mascarpone cream, whipped chantilly, warm zabaglione or a slab of vanilla gelato between the discs all work, and a filled pandoro is a serious dessert rather than a novelty.

Stale pandoro is excellent in trifle and tiramisù: it soaks up liquid better than sponge fingers and brings its own butter and vanilla.

Unopened, the cellophane bag does the preserving and the maker prints a date on it, often several months ahead; that date is the reference and nothing about the loaf tells you more. Store the box upright somewhere cool and dark, 15 to 20 C, away from the oven and off a sunny shelf, because warmth is what pushes the butter toward a flat, papery smell. Leave the icing sugar sachet sealed and separate until the moment of serving, since the sugar draws moisture out of the crumb on contact and goes damp and grey.

After cutting, pandoro dries faster than panettone because it carries no fruit to hold water. Slice it horizontally through the star, press the loaf back together, and keep it in its own bag with the top folded and clipped; at room temperature the crumb stays soft for two to three days and then stiffens and crumbs at the edges. The fridge accelerates that, so the counter is the better place. Wrapped slices keep about three months at minus 18 C and are warmed briefly in a low oven.

The shape settles it: a tall truncated eight-pointed star, moulded rather than baked in paper, with sharp ridges and a deep golden crust, and a small sachet of vanilla icing sugar tucked into the bag. Cut across, the crumb is fine, even and strongly yellow from egg yolk, and it tears into silky strands instead of crumbing. On the ingredients, look for lievito madre or natural sourdough, butter and egg yolk near the top; Italian rules set minimums for butter and yolk before the name pandoro can be used, so margarine, palm oil and added flavouring describe a different sweet loaf.

Abroad the two Christmas loaves get shelved together and treated as versions of each other. Panettone is domed, baked in its paper mould, and full of candied peel and raisins; pandoro has no fruit at all, and that is the whole point of it. Star-shaped sponge cakes in plastic clamshells with a shelf life measured in a year are a supermarket product borrowing the outline. A pandoro from a named Veronese bakery costs several times an industrial box of the same weight.

Anywhere Italian food is sold, from November. Supermarkets in the US and UK stock the big Veronese brands (Melegatti, Bauli, Paluani) at roughly $10-18 or £7-14 for a kilo, and Italian delicatessens carry artisan versions at $40-80 or £28-45.

Because pandoro contains no fruit and a lot of butter, quality differences show up in the fat rather than in the inclusions: read the label for burro and reject anything listing margarine or vegetable oils, and look for real vanilla rather than vanillin.

The supermarket product is honestly decent here, because the gap between industrial and artisan is narrower than it is for panettone, because there is no candied peel to get wrong.

After 26 December prices collapse everywhere, in Italy and abroad. Pandoro keeps for weeks, so late December is the rational time to buy.

Verona in December, where you can eat pandoro and its ancestor on the same afternoon: bakeries in the historic centre still make nadalin, the low, almond-crusted star that predates the pandoro patent by six centuries.

The city's Christmas markets fill piazza dei Signori from late November, and a comet-shaped sculpture descends into the Roman Arena for the season. In Bovolone, half an hour away, the Perbellini pastry house has made its Offella d'Oro since 1891, the artisan cousin of pandoro, and three years older than the patent.

Verona is also the industrial capital of Italian Christmas: Melegatti, Bauli and Paluani are all Veronese companies, which is why the city smells of butter and vanilla in November.

For a direct comparison, do Verona and Milan in the same week. Pandoro in one, panettone in the other, and the argument settles itself.