by Victoria Kazarian
My first introduction to Stollen, the German Christmas bread, was at a Weihnachtsmarkt (Christmas Market) where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
That stollen was as dry and stiff as the cardboard it was wrapped in–probably because it had been shipped from Germany months earlier.
But I liked the idea of it. I mean, fruit and bread!
A few years later, when I was running my own baking business, a customer asked if I made stollen. I found a recipe and made it. It was a completely different bread, soft and tantalizingly sweet and buttery. I put it on my menu that Christmas, and it was a hit.
But the truth is, stollen got its start being dry and tasteless.
Back in Germany in the 1400s, it was the bread eaten during advent, which back then was a time of fasting. You weren’t supposed to enjoy it. It was yeasted bread but without any of the good stuff—no sugar, no fruit, no butter even.
Then two princes from Saxony wrote to the Pope asking if this tasteless bread could please be made with butter and sugar. Because isn’t Christmas supposed to be a celebration?
They were given permission, though the princes had to pay a penance and it took forty years to get the actual approval.
Then stollen took off, big time. The bread became a German Christmas favorite, filled with fruit, spices and marzipan, and topped with sugar and icing.
As time went on, making stollen became a competition to see how big you could make it. In 1730, to celebrate his military victories, King Augustus II of Saxony commissioned a stollen loaf that weighed almost three tons. A special oven had to be built to bake it. The loaf required a six-foot-long knife to slice it, and it served 24,000 people.
Even today, the city of Dresden, Germany, has a Stollenfest during advent, where a huge, festive stollen is rolled through the streets, accompanied by the festival’s queen, the Stollenmädchen.
In the spirit of the big tradition, my recipe for Weihnachtsstollen makes a loaf that will feed 16-20 people. It’s soft, filled with fruit, and has a strip of almond paste running through it. It makes a great Christmas Day breakfast and tastes amazing with coffee.
Feel free to slather it with butter, in remembrance of how long it took the Germans to get approval for it. 😂
Weihnachtsstollen
(Christmas Stollen)
Time required to make: A little over 2 hours
This recipe makes a hefty stollen—approximately 16 by 7 inches—big enough for a Christmas get-together. It will keep for a week at room temperature and freezes well (can be kept for about six months frozen).
You can use the traditional marzipan instead of almond paste if you want. It’s a lot sweeter than almond paste. I try to cut down sugar when I can, and using almond paste doesn’t change the flavor.
Ingredients
2 tablespoons yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm half-and-half or whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup softened butter
Zest of two oranges
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (6 oz.) of Greek yogurt (with at least 5 percent fat. I use Fage)
4 tablespoons warm water
1 to 1-1/2 tubes of almond paste (each tube 7 ounces)
2/3 cup of chopped dried apricots, cherries, currants, blueberries, or raisins
½ to 1 cup of powdered sugar
Two sheets of large baking parchment
A sheet pan big enough – 11 x 17 inches
In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in 4 tablespoons of the lukewarm milk. Blend it with a fork to minimize any globs. Then add a teaspoon of the sugar. Let it sit for 15 minutes till it’s bubbly.
In a large bowl (or the bowl of your stand mixer), mix the flour and remaining sugar. Make a hole in this dry mixture and pour in all your remaining milk and the wet yeast mixture. Then add the orange zest, nutmeg, and salt. Cut the butter into smaller pieces and place them around the bowl.
Add the Greek yogurt to your main bowl and the 4 tablespoons of warm water. Now mix all of this together thoroughly. If you’ve got a stand mixer, use a hook attachment to mix it, then let it run to knead the dough for 4-5 minutes until it pulls together.
If you don’t have a stand mixer, no problem. Mix everything in the large bowl till completely blended, then place the ball of dough on a floured surface and knead by hand, pushing the heels of your hands forward in the dough to stretch it—then flopping the dough over on itself—then pushing forward with your hands to stretch it again. Do this for about five minutes, till the dough is stretchy and holding together.
Set the dough in a lightly greased bowl to rise in a warm spot for about 1 hour, covered with a dish towel. It’s ready when it’s roughly doubled in size.
After it’s risen, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Chop your dried fruit and open the package(s) of almond paste, flattening it into a long rectangle. I put mine in between a folded sheet of parchment paper and use a rolling pin to get it about ¼ inch thick and about 16 inches long.
On a lightly floured piece of baking parchment, shape the dough into a large rectangle about ½ to 3/4 inch thick and 16-17 inches long. Lay the flattened almond paste along one half of the dough. Sprinkle the dried fruit evenly across the entire rectangle. Fold the dough over on itself so the ends meet. Pinch the sides and ends closed firmly.
Lift the parchment paper with the stollen carefully and set it down on the sheet pan.
Bake for about 35 minutes until it’s a deep golden brown.
Brush the freshly baked stollen with melted butter, then use a sieve or sifter to sprinkle powdered sugar generously over the top so it looks like a nice layer of snow. Decorate the top with pieces of dried fruit.
Slice and eat after letting it cool for at least a half an hour. Enjoy!
ABOUT VICTORIA
Victoria Kazarian is a mystery author and former professional baker who writes two series: The Laughing Loaf Bakery cozy mysteries which take place in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains and Silicon Valley Murder, a police procedural series. She lives with her software engineer husband, two young adult children, and a dog named Peewee, who is notoriously not very well behaved.
