Recipe: vegan panforte; gluten free and sugar free

⏲ 15-20 minutes
⏳ baking time 15-20 minutes
🍽 approximately 18 slices

This delicious recipe is gluten free, sugar free and full of healthy ingredients. Only a small piece of this can fulfill your feeling of hunger. Panforte, which literally means ‘firm or strong bread’ referring to the spiciness that it originally contained, was created in Sienna, Italy. Panforte was originally created by a nun who made honey bread for the monastery, she used the spices gained from tradesman and mixed them into her honey bread. It was made with a lot of spices like cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper. At first only nobility and the wealthy ate panforte because of high costs of not only the almonds and spices but also the orange peel and cedar. During the 16th century Ferdinando de Medici gave the pharmacists the exclusive rights to bake and sell this ‘tasty medicine’. In 1879 Panforte gained it’s first variation from the peppery original because of the arrival of queen Margherita in Sienna. That variation was without the cedar and used a vanilla sugar coating instead of the previously used black pepper. Today that version is still known under the name: Panforte Margherita.

After reading this interesting bit of Italian history, let’s get into it and start baking!

Ingredients:
– 90 grams of buckwheat flour (and a little bit extra for the finishing touch)
– 40 grams of almond flour
– 20 grams of coconut flour
– 150 grams of mixed nuts
– 90 grams of palm blossom sugar
– 60 grams of honey (there are some vegan alternatives, Biotoday/VegaBlum that have vegan honey substitutes and otherwise you can use maple syrup or agave syrup instead of honey)
– 150 grams of dried figs
– 75 grams of dried apricots
– 2 teaspoons of biscuit spices

The first step is to weight all the ingredients and to cut the dried fruits in quarters. Then you’ll need a pan to heat the palm blossom sugar and honey. Let the mixture heat up and stir a little until it’s a nice syrup like mix, then add the dried figs and apricots. Stir the mixture in between and confit the fruits for a couple of minutes, this doesn’t take long but you’ll want the dried fruits to reach a higher temperature before going to the next step. Add the nuts and biscuit spices. Remove the pan from the heat after you mixed it well. Let it cool down for about 20 minutes so you won’t burn your hands in the next part. If you have a food processor strong enough then you can do this without waiting for 20 minutes of course, but we kneaded the dough by hand. In the meantime you can grease the baking mold and preheat the oven on 190 degrees Celsius.

Put the 3 types of flours in a bowl and add the mixture from the pan and mix or knead the dough till it’s a smooth whole. Spread some buckwheat flour over the kitchen worktop and roll the dough out on the flour with a rolling pin. Place baking paper in the baking mold and put the mixture on top of it (originally this was done with “ouwel” a kind of edible paper). Push the dough hard into the mold (to prevent the panforte from rising) and place some buckwheat flower on top (to prevent burning the top). Set the backing mold in the oven and the panforte is done after baking it for 15-20 minutes. Depending on your oven and the type of mold used.

We hope you’ll enjoy this panforte and if there are any questions please let us know!