The best panettone: bakers reveal the secrets to making the Italian Christmas loaf, plus six of the best places to buy – or try – panettone in Hong Kong

You know the most wonderful time of the year is near when certain items appear in bulk in the supermarket: legs of ham, gingerbread men, whole turkeys, chocolate logs – and panettone.

The last has many detractors, who find it a dry, tasteless waste of calories best consigned to the scrapheap of tradition. That’s a shame, as many people only try the mass-produced varieties and miss out on the delights of artisanal panettone. At its best, panettone should be a billowing, toffee-hued, chef’s-hat-shaped mass of sweet bread, with creamy, pillow-like insides studded with raisins and citrus peel.

The precise origin of panettone is unclear, though it has been traced back to 15th-century Milan, long before Italy became a nation. Copious use of luxury ingredients such as butter, eggs and candied fruit limited its consumption to festive occasions, and it only became globally popular in the 20th century with the advent of industrial production.

Making panettone the traditional way, however, is considered by some as the Mount Everest of baking.

“Anything and everything can go wrong at any stage of the process,” says Li Kwok-cheung (also known as KC), founder of Hong Kong bakery Levain. He reels off a list of pitfalls that includes split or cracked dough, dry and crumbly texture, and collapsing and even exploding bread.

Li, a self-taught baker who has four outlets in Hong Kong and has been making panettone for nine years, was drawn to such a challenge after learning how to make sourdough bread. “Panettone is the hardest, most interesting and challenging bread to make, and tests every baking fundamental,” he says.