Why panettone?

Panettone is originally an Italian confection, but over the past 30 years, we have seen its popularity grow from year to year among Maltese people. Our close proximity to the Italian mainland and its culture and the influence of television, no doubt, have been major factors. Here at Maypole, our core business is bread in all shapes, sizes and flavours, over and above our flagship product, the ħobża tal-Malti. We also produce a wide variety of cakes and other pastries. The panettone, an Italian type of sweet bread originally from Milan, comes somewhere half-way between bread and pastries. In fact, its very name indicates that it is a type of bread. Therefore, our venturing into its production was a natural step forward.

When did you first start work on this project?

In reality, we had been toying with this idea since 2014, but then COVID hit in early 2020, and there was quite an impact on all economic activity. The corporate strategy adopted by Maypole to face this new situation was growth, and this included the development of a wider range of home-baked products.  So, sometime in mid-2020, we decided to try our hand and have a trial run with producing panettone for Maypole retail outlets all over the Maltese islands. Using our own experience in baking, and conducting extensive research on methods and materials, we managed to come up with a test production run for the 2020 Christmas season. This enjoyed a reasonable success, so it was decided that a similar trial production would be repeated for 2021, with more investment and preparation to be invested.  

What do you mean by more investment and preparation?  

Our aim was always to bake a panettone that does not roll off an automated production line in large quantities, but is more of a high-quality, artisanal product. Although my team of bakers are all highly qualified and experienced, we saw that making panettone needed an infusion of know-how from its mothership, so to speak, Italy. We therefore imported Italian expertise, bringing them over to Malta to train us and help us acquire this know-how. Another key-factor is the ingredients we use.

Since we were aiming to have a quality product, we could not make do with mass-produced inferior-quality components. We make sure that we purchase high-end ingredients such as the dried fruit, the almonds, the sugar nibs, the chocolate and the yeast, especially the yeast. You cannot expect to have an excellent final product if you use mediocre component ingredients. In fact, the 2021 exercise proved to be more successful than that of the preceding year, so we decided that Christmas 2022 would see our panettone populating our shelves and on offer to our business clientele as one of our wide range of seasonal delicacies.

What would you say makes the Maypole panettone unique and distinctive? 

Well, first of all, it is not a mass-produced industrial panettone like many of the imported varieties that are on offer. We set much focus on the artisanal aspect of our production, with trained and knowledgeable bakers from my team being involved in all stages of production, monitoring each step of the process. Our panettone does not need to travel hundreds of kilometres to reach our consumers, and our production numbers are not in the vast quantities like those of the imported brands. This means that we can have a more compact production period, and do not need to start producing tens of thousands of panettone from months before Christmas. Therefore we are not compelled to prepare our sweetbread to last for months, thus not needing to use large quantities of preservatives, but only the barest minimum.

With a shorter from-oven-to-shop cycle and distance, we can stock our shelves with a fresher product rather than a more preserved one. You will not see our panettone selling at slashed prices after the Christmas and New Year season is over, that’s for sure! 

What are the timeframes for this season?

In early October, we started production of sample batches for the control of quality, and its durability over a period of time. This helped us set our production timetable with the optimal time for the actual production to take place towards the end of November. The first week of December saw the Maypole artisanal panettone boxes gracing our outlet shelves, and we also had a significant demand for them by our corporate clients, who saw this fresh, artisanal product, locally-baked to the highest traditional standards as being the perfect gift for their staff or clients.

A Maypole panettone is a guarantee of freshness, quality and taste.