Make the poolish. Weigh 100g of the flour into a large jug or bowl and weigh in 100g of cold water. Add in 1 tsp of the caster sugar and the 1/8 tsp yeast.

To prove the poolish, you can either use cold water and put it in a cool place to prove slowly, over approximately 6 hours or you can use warm and tuck it away somewhere cosy like the airing cupboard or boiler room to prove in 2 hours, giving you enough time to make the whole recipe in one day. The cold prove develops the flavour best but means you are likely to have a very long day baking or need to spread it out over two days.

Once the poolish is at least doubled, if not trebled in size and foamy, bubbly and very well aerated, start making your main dough.

Put the rest of the ingredients bar the milk in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix with the dough hook on low, dribbling in the milk very, very slowly to ensure you don’t add too much. You want an ever so slightly sticky dough, not a gloopy mess but likewise be bold – a dry dough is not a good thing.

When everything has combined, add in your poolish then mix on low to medium speed for as long as it takes to get a soft, elastic, smooth dough which cleans the sides of the bowl. This may take 10-15 minutes and as there is a lot of dough, you may need to stop the mixer and push the dough back down into the bowl a few times to ensure the whole lot gets mixed adequately. You would need to be PopEye to do this by hand! Or just more energetic than me ;) …

When ready, pop in a greased bowl and cover with cling. Leave to prove until doubled in size. You can do this over night in the fridge but you will need to punch it down a couple of times to stop it clamouring out of the bowl! Again, the overnight prove maximises the flavour but don’t feel this is a must – proving it on the worktop is faster and using a poolish to begin with gives bags of flavour to the finished loaves.

If you do chill it, bring out to come to room temperature before proceeding to the next stage. Popping it in the airing cupboard/boiler room can hasten this process but check on it after 20-30 minutes to ensure it’s not trying to escape once again!

Once proved and warm if it had been chilled, butter your pandoro tins very well and divide the dough into two. Shape into two balls and place seem side down in the prepared pans. Now it’s time for the final prove – cover with cling and leave somewhere warm.

Preheat the oven to 180°C and when the dough has doubled in size bake for 35-40 minutes. They will rise a little more on baking and given all the eggs and sugar the crust will brown nicely so do be sure they are baked before removing from the oven – tap to see if they sound hollow, pierce with a skewer to ensure the centre isn’t doughy and also when you lift the tins up, they should feel light, not heavy.

Allow to cool briefly – 5 minutes should do – then unmould them. The tbs tend to not be nonstick so you need to get them out whilst warm or it will be hard to remove them. Finish cooling on the rack and when cool, dust liberally with icing sugar before slicing and serving.