In Italy, Pandoro has always competed with Panettone to be the most beloved dessert for the Christmas holidays. Panettone remains the best-selling leavened dessert, but Pandoro is gaining ground. Pandoro was born October 14, 1884, when Domenico Melegatti, owner of a grocery store in centre of Verona, obtained the certificate of industrial property rights (the patent of the time) from the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce of the Kingdom of Italy, for the creation of a new dessert that perfected a recipe made for centuries in Veronese homes with various versions. In addition to the recipe, Domenico Melegatti also filed a patent for the shape, the traditional 8-point star, designed by an impressionist painter, Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca, distinguished for having participated several times at the Venice Biennale and for having earned awards at the Parisian Universal Exhibition. Melegatti, besides being a skilled pastry chef, turned out to be an excellent entrepreneur; for the sales launch of the dessert, he organized a competition with an award of a thousand Italian lire. This amount would have been won by the person who succeeded in making the perfect dessert at home. Domenico knew that no one would be able to succeed, but in the meantime, the idea decreed the success of the Pandoro and allowed him to become a small industrialist. 33
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