In Northern Italy there are two typical Christmas cakes: panettone – which was originated in Milan –, and pandoro – which was originated in Verona and literally means “golden loaf” – pan d’oro.

 

pane —> elided in pan before a consonant, masculine singular noun = bread / loaf

di —> elided in d’ before a vowel = simple preposition, in this case indicating material

oro —> masculine singular noun = gold

d’oro —> golden

 

Note that in Italian there exists also an adjective – like the English golden – indicating that something is either made of gold or looking like it, that is dorato. Technically it’s the past participle of the verb dorare.

 

Dorat-o, -a, -e, -i = golden

 

Examples:

- Anna ha i capelli dorati / Anna has golden hair

- Ho versato il vino in una coppa d’oro / I poured the wine into a goblet made of gold

 

Both pandoro and panettone are soft leavened products, made with eggs, butter, flour, sugar and yeast (in different quantity, of course), but panettone is made with raisins (uvetta) and candied fruits (canti), too, while pandoro not. This makes pandoro a child’s favourite – Italian children apparently don’t like raisins and candied fruits that much. 

 

Another blatant difference is the shape: panettone looks like a cylinder with a cupola top, whereas pandoro is shaped like a frustum with an eight-pointed star section.

 

Both panettone and pandoro are sold in supermarkets and bakeries only during the Christmas holidays, and eaten exclusively during that time of the year.

In Milan, though, people up to this day are used to eating some leftover panettone on February 3rd, because February 3rd is St. Blaise day – “il giorno di San Biagio” – and according to a Christian legend if you eat some leftover panettone on that day, St. Blaise will keep the cold and sore throat away.

 

Examples:

- Ogni anno a San Biagio i miei nonni mangiano una fetta di panettone posso / Every year on St. Blaise Day my grandparents eat a slice of stale panettone

 

Note that posso (pòsso) is dialectal, a word originally found only in Northern regions of Italy, especially in Lombardy and Piedmont, but frequently used in recipes. The standard Italian word for it is raffermo (in all its forms).

 

For example:

- Non mi piace il pane raffermo / I don’t like stale bread