Hello everyone!

Today I bring something delicious! If you’ve been following me on Instagram or Facebook, you already know I’ve been experimenting with lievito madre, and I even made panettone with it! 🙂

Lievito madre is the stiff sourdough starter used by Italian bakers to make panettones the artisanal way. This method requires a lot of flour and a lot of refreshments during the first 15 days, and while the first-week discards are not suitable for baking, the rest are. Especially the 3 discards from the 3 preparatory refreshments before making panettone.

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If you want to learn how to make your own lievito madre check this post!

Every time I did a refreshment, I had 150-200 g of lievito madre that I threw away. On day 9 or 10 of the process, I made a loaf of bread and it turned out great, so the next day I used the discards to make challah and it turned out great too. The taste was amazing, and it just had a pleasant hint of sourness.

Sourness in enriched dough has been my pet peeve and the reason I usually use commercial yeast. I can’t stand a bread that’s supposed to be sweet and yet the only thing you taste is a strong acidic flavor. I like that on country loaves, but not on brioche or a croissant.

That’s the whole point of working with lievito madre (either soaked in water or tied up in a cloth). In the soaked in water method, part of the acid is released in the water. Don’t forget that this sourdough starter is used in panettone, and real Italian panettones are not acidic at all. You shouldn’t be able to tell that the panettone was made with sourdough.

Baking with lievito madre

Working with lievito madre is addictive, seriously! I don’t even care how much time I’ve invested in creating it, or how much flour I’ve used. I can tell how differently the dough behaves, the different aromas compared to my regular sourdough starter, etc.

Based on the amazing flavor and incredible texture of the challah I baked, I decided to experiment a bit more and make cinnamon rolls. Because I have yet to find a recipe that doesn’t turn out into super dry rolls.

This recipe doesn’t have frosting because I wanted to taste the bread, the aromas from the lievito madre and how they combined with the ingredients on the recipe.

I did tweak the recipe a bit and I used orange syrup and orange blossom water in the dough, the filling has ground walnuts, ground cinnamon, and orange zest, and the icing has orange juice instead of milk or water.

The result was amazing, the lievito madre helped to balance the aromas of the dough and significantly improved the texture of the rolls, they were soft and chewy and delicious! Even though I used lievito madre that had never been “purified” before (by doing a bagnetto, a technique to reduce the acidity of the dough when making panettone with lievito madre), and the dough fermented for 8h at room temperature and another 8 in the fridge, the rolls tuned out delicious with a pleasant hint of sourness, you could tell they were made with sourdough but the flavor was great.

I think the texture of the dough was also different, it was more forgiving, and I could develop the gluten with a much gentle kneading that using levain or commercial yeast.

Let’s get into the recipe!

After draining, squeezing and using part of the lievito madre to do the refreshment, take the discards, weight how much you need and cut it into small pieces (half an inch or so) so they can be absorbed into the dough faster.

In your stand mixer bowl, add the wet ingredients and combine very well, then add the flour and the lievito madre in pieces.

Knead until the dough gets some elasticity and then add the softened butter. continue kneading until you have a perfect gluten development. You will have to stop a few times and let the dough rest for some minutes. You can check this post to learn how to knead enriched dough.

Once the dough is ready, shape it into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled container. Cover it and let it ferment at room temperature until it doubles in size. Mine took about 8h (the milk and the egg were cold). Place the dough in the fridge and let it ferment another 8h (I left it in the fridge overnight).

If you have enough time, you don’t have to leave the dough in the fridge overnight, although I do recommend you to let the dough chill for 1h before you shape the rolls, because this dough is stikier than the regular cinammon roll dough.

The next day, take the dough out of the fridge, deflate it very well and let it rest 10 mins before shaping.

Roll the dough into a 35x45cm rectangle, spread the filling and starting from the longer side, roll the dough onto itself to make a log. Seal the log and cut it into 9-12 pieces.

Place the rolls into a lightly oiled 9x9in square pan and let them ferment, covered, until they touch each other.

Before they finish proofing, turn your oven on at 350F.

When ready, bake for 30 mins or until the rolls are golden brown. You can brush them with egg wash if you prefer.

Prepare the icing and wait until the rolls cool down a little before you drizzle the icing.

Enjoy!