Dyes, percentage of candied fruit, weight: the doves of the supermarket in comparison. Tips for choosing the best one

What to watch out for when buying a dove? Useful advice on this is given by the Lifebuoy which compared 7 well-known brands

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Easter is coming and, despite the difficult situation, probably no one will give up the dove, a typical dessert of this holiday. The most intrepid will try to prepare it at home, while most will buy it at the supermarket. To help in the choice, Il Salvagente compared 7 well-known brands of colomba and provided useful tips for choosing this dessert in the best possible way.

On the shelves of supermarkets these days there is a riot of Easter products: typical cold cuts and cheeses, traditional sweet and savory pizzas, eggs and small eggs but also doves in different variations: classic, without candied chocolate, fruit, etc.

You may not know that the original recipe for the colomba is by Angelo Motta who, starting from the sweet bread, and adding granulated sugar and almond icing, I create the Easter cake that we all know and appreciate today.

Every year the offer is very wide and often you don't have a clear idea of what to buy. The Lifebuoy tried to give some useful tips to facilitate the purchase of this product using the following brands as an example:

Balocco - Classical
Bauli - Classical Dove
Maina – the Great Colomba
Melegatti - the Classic Colomba
Motta - Original
Paulani - Soft Dove
Tre Marie - the Traditional Dove

Index

How to choose the dove

The magazine provides basic indications for choosing the best dove to bring to the table at Easter, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the various brands.

Here's what to look out for when buying:

Weight

Perhaps lured by the lower price and the large packaging we could fall into one of the most frequent purchase errors. Always check the weight of the dove carefully, the attractive offer could actually "hide" a lower weight and therefore the presumed savings would not be such.

Individual brands could also propose more formats eg Paulani and Balocco which have the dove in 500 grams, 750 grams and 1 kg versions. While Maina and Melegatti they offer doves of 750 grams and 1 kg. So pay attention to this aspect.

Fresh ingredients

Pay attention to the list of ingredients. A dove cannot miss: flour, butter, eggs, milk, candied fruit (if it is the classic one), sugar and almonds, ingredients that should be as fresh as possible (especially milk and eggs).

Of the doves analyzed is that of trunks than that of Motta use milk and egg white powder and Melegatti and Tre Marie only powdered whey.

Dyes, flavors and emulsifiers

Unfortunately, always present in industrial doves, also questionable ingredients such as mono and diglycerides of fatty acids, used as emulsifiers. Try to choose the colomba with the fewest total ingredients and which uses the most fresh ingredients.

Then there is the presence of aromas, which all brands use, and in the case of Paluani dove also preservatives used for the dove glaze.

It would be good to buy products without preservatives and flavorings instead. Often artisanal doves that do not use them and that are made with higher quality raw materials are also found in common supermarkets.

Yeast used

The colomba must have a slow leavening, which is why it is usually used mother yeast (on the label also referred to as natural yeast). All those analyzed use this type of yeast.

Percentage of candids

Those who love the classic colomba can also make their choice based on the percentage of candied fruit contained in the dessert. All those taken as a sample use, as tradition requires, candied orange peel but in different quantities. There colomba Melegatti has 18% for the environment, and the Motta reaches only 11%. If you are interested in this aspect, read the label carefully and do not be satisfied with a percentage of less than 15%.

Visual test and taste

To understand if your dove is of good quality, note if:

it adheres to the cup, that is to the paper that wraps it around the base and sides
the crust is well tied to the pasta
there is a good alveolation, holes in the dough due to correct leavening
there is a nice icing on top, regular, well adherent, not burnt, smooth and with almonds and sugars spread evenly on top
once in the mouth the consistency of the dove must be soft and not rubbery
the general flavor of the dove must not present aftertaste
the candied fruit must be soft and leave a pleasant taste in the mouth

However, these are aspects that we can only evaluate once we have purchased the colomba and when we taste it. And if our choice was wrong, it's a little too late to fix it!

Source: Il Salvagente