When the holidays approach, everybody's tummies begin daydreaming about sweets like cookies, fruit cake, eggnog, holiday cherry pie etc. In Italy, specifically in the city of Milan (my hometown), we only dream about Panettone bread, a yeast-leavened bread, usually made with raisins, candied fruit peels, almonds, and brandy. So yummy!
Panettone is undoubtedly the most famous Christmas cake, but surely few people know its history and origins. The birth of this cake is linked to many popular legends, but one in particular is the most credited. The birth of panettone dates back to the 15th century at the court of Ludovico il Moro, lord of Milan.
The origins of Panettone bread
During a Christmas Eve banquet at the court of Ludovico il Moro, the Sforza family cook, who was in charge of cooking dessert for the banquet, inadvertently burned the dessert. Dismay and panic broke out in the kitchen; no one had any idea how to remedy such a mistake. Then, a certain Toni, nothing more than a kitchen scullery boy, took matters into his own hands. Toni decided to use a loaf of yeast he had saved for Christmas Day. He kneaded it for a long time, adding eggs, flour, sugar, raisins and candied fruit to the dough and baked it. He thus obtained a leavened and fluffy cake, liked and appreciated by all diners.
The Sforzas decided to call it “pan di Toni” in honour of the brave young scullery boy. What is certain, from the writings and testimonies that have come down to us, is that originally panettone most likely resembled a loaf of bread more than a cake. Over the years, at Christmas time, instead of using less than noble flour, people began to use wheat and to enrich the dough with candied fruit and raisins.
Panettone Baj - A return to the history of Milan's oldest panettone ... and one of my personal favourites!
Mr. Giuseppe Baj, the father of Milanese panettone.
In 1872, Giuseppe Baj opened the Baj Confetteria in Piazza del Duomo, as the point-of-sale of a busy business producing and trading panettone, chocolate and other confectionery products, in a “large hydraulic-powered and steam-powered factory.”
The business was very successful throughout the golden age preceding World War I, with growing national success and continuous export expansion.
Giuseppe Baj had the “good fortune” of not having to witness the holocaust of the Great War and the subsequent disruption of international trade, later followed by autarkic policies, with the inevitable repositioning of panettone as a mostly Italian dessert.
Giuseppe Baj's tomb is located at the Monumental Cemetery in Milan. Because of its artistic and architectural value, it was one of the 26 chosen for a study and exhibition organized by the Milan Polytechnic.
Panettone Baj continued to be produced in the 1930s by some of Giuseppe's sons, including Alfredo, Cesare's grandfather and Tomaso's great-grandfather, and Luigi, but at an artisanal level far removed from the splendour of the past, until it died out toward the end of the decade, coinciding with the outbreak of World War II.
Since the postwar period, the Milanese dessert experienced a real boom and was able to return to offer moments of gustatory happiness in homes all over the world. But one had to reach 2016 to witness the reappearance of the Baj Panettone, by the heirs Cesare and his son Tomaso.
They have been fortunate enough to inherit both the original recipe and a wealth of heirlooms from the personal and industrial history of their ancestor Giuseppe, which have fortunately survived countless generational transitions, removals, world wars and changes in the activities of family members.
Confetteria Baj was the first building in Europe illuminated with electricity.
The Baj Confetteria, with a few surrounding buildings, including Caffè Cova, had a curious record: electric lighting. In fact, in 1883, right in Via Santa Radegonda, the first electrothermal power plant in Europe, the second in the world after the one in Chicago, built by engineer Colombo based on an Edison design, went into operation.
For the record, also in 1883, the opening of La Scala's opera season, with Amilcare Ponchielli's “La Gioconda,” took place on December 26, just a few steps away from the Baj Confetteria, to the amazement and wonder of the audience in attendance. It was in fact the first theater on the continent illuminated thanks to electricity, by 2880 incandescent lamps to be precise.
The thermoelectric power plant inside Confetteria Baj's factory was built by engineer Colombo, based on an Edison design, in 1883. The Baj Confetteria, along with the Teatro della Scala and Corso Vittorio Emanuele boast the record for electric lighting in Europe.
History of panettone Baj.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the more than century-old confectionery business of the Baj family consisted of confectionery and chocolate production, and the marketing of sweets, wines and liqueurs, but it became famous in Italy and around the world especially for the production of panettone.
Panettone became the main element in advertisements and the dominant theme on the covers of catalogues and promotional publications. The same metal packages of confectionery products advertised panettoni as the main and characteristic production of the House.
Baj's Panettone was considered the best in Milan for decades, a fact officially attested by winning awards and medals. For example, it earned the first prize at the Milan expositions of 1881 and 1887.
The antiquity of the Baj family's confectionery production can be deduced from some documents in the possession of the current heirs, which date the beginnings of the business to 1768.
At the popular level, one must record the slogan, reported by many sources, that resonated in the heads of the Milanese between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: “When in Milan there was not yet the trams people already enjoyed the Panettone Baj ”.
At that time panettone was a dessert consumed all year round. That is why it was always remarked in the advertisements that “The Giuseppe Baj bakery and confectionery always have ready and very fresh the all-Milanese specialty of panettone.”
Giuseppe Baj, which had branch offices in Genoa and Switzerland, regularly exported panettone to the entire European continent, including Russia, America, and even Australia.
Source https://www.panettonebaj.it
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