Italian Christmas Bread

In Italy, panettone is the traditional Christmas bread—offered when friends drop in throughout the holiday season, served for breakfast Christmas morning, and sometimes filled with pastry cream or chocolate to make a fancy dessert.

Though in Italy panettone is prepared in some pastry shops, most often, even there, it comes from the same industrial bakeries that market their panettoni in the United States—Motta, Alemagna, and Tre Marie, to name a few.

Panettone, whether prepa