Stollen (from Simone)
Makes 4 stollen each about 800 grams
1. Soak for 12-24 hours:
800 g raisins
250 g slivered or ground almonds
100 g candied peel
250 ml rum (80 proof)
Soak the fruit and almonds in the rum
2. When you are ready to bake, make a pre dough:
In a big bowl, whisk together:
50 g dry yeast (25 g instant or 100 g fresh)
250 ml warm milk
1 tsp sugar
Leave this for 10-15 minutes until the yeast has formed a beige sludge on the top.
Mix in:
200 g flour. Cover and leave for 1 hour until it has puffed up considerably.
3. Add:
800 g flour
150 g sugar
250 g butter
100 g lard
20 g salt
Grated zest of one lemon
Knead well for 10 minutes and let rest for 30 minutes.
4. Pull it out of the bowl and and add in the soaked fruit and nut mix by folding and "chopping" it in gently witha dough scraper and let rest for one hour.
Fold the soaked fruit and nuts into the dough
5. Divide into four pieces and pat each piece into a square about 2 cm thick. At this point, if you are adding marzipan, shape it into a sausage and lay it down the middle of each squares. Fold the right hand edge of the dough square into the middle (and over the marzipan if you have added it) and then fold the left hand edge all the way over the dough to the right hand edge. Like folding a piece of A4 paper (81/2 by 11") for an envelope. Let the loaves rest while you heat the oven to 250 C. Put in stolen and reduce heat to 180. Bake for 50 minutes.
Shaping stollen - like folding paper for an envelope
Remove from oven and place carefully on a cooling rack. Brush with 125 g melted butter. Sprinkle a spoon of vanilla sugar over each one (make this at least a week in advance by putting a vanilla pod in a container full of sugar) and dust liberally with icing sugar. Dribble on 125 g more butter and let cool. Sprinkle again with icing sugar.
Stollen with icing sugar 2
Wrap well in greaseproof paper and then aluminium foil. Store in a cool dry place for at least 6 weeks before eating it.
How to store stollen
6 Responses to “Stollen (from Simone)”
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14. Oct, 2011
[...] and bake stollen to take home? Click here to take the stollen course. Confident baker? Click here for the recipe and have fun [...]
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12. Dec, 2011
[...] from now. You will love it. For those of you who could not attend the class, the recipe is here but don't forget, you must let it rest for at least 4 weeks after it is baked. Bake now for [...]
Sarah Bond
19. Oct, 2011
Have set aside some time this weekend to try this recipe, can't wait. Going to try soaking my fruit mixture in Ginger wine as I don't have brandy in the house. I wonder if that will work?
virtuousbread
19. Oct, 2011
Hi Sarah
No! Wine is too low in alcohol content to preserve the cake. You need 40% alcohol minimum. If you use wine, you will need to eat the cake within a couple of weeks and it won't be as nice. Just so you know!
Ol
10. Dec, 2011
Hi there!
Pretty much finished the recipe as described (thanks for sharing it!).
Couple of things that I found:
a) It looked like a lot of fruit in the ingredients (almost as much as the flour) and it is. Is that correct? I followed faithfully and it seems way too much (for instance the fruit in my bread seems at least double what you're showing in the pictures given above).
b) The dough was too stiff, even after the fruit and brandy soak had been added. I used a mix of plain flour and strong flour (my usual for 'cakey' breads) so I don't know if that was it - but the mix was, with the amounts given difficult to say the least. I added 50 ml of milk and it was still v. stiff. Roughly (very roughly) I'd always add 250ml of liquid to 500g of flour.
Would love your feedback. Are the amounts given correct?
Sorry for a bit of a downer comment.. I've followed the website with genuine interest as very keen baker myself and very much support what you're are doing here.
Thanks,
Ol
virtuousbread
10. Dec, 2011
Hi Ol, this is not a downer comment at alll, thank you for following a recipe and for coming back with concerns. It's important to know if I have made a mistake. In this case, however, there is no mistake. The amount of fruit is correct and yes it is a challenge to get it all in, but it does go (after the raisins try to make a run for it onto the floor a few times). The mixture will be sticky and cakey. Sometimees the best thing to do is to knead in everything as best you can except the fat and then add the fat as the VERY LAST thing and knead it it - like a brioche. This mixture takes a good 10-15 minutes of kneading for the butter to do its transformational thing - as all bread with high fat content does. After that it really does become like chewing gum. I understand your ratios and, in fact, my bread is wetter than that (300-350 ml liquid to 500 ml flour) but remember, fat counts like a liquid so you have the milk + butter + lard = 600 grams of "liquid" for 1 kg of flour plus all the fruit which is plenty liquid! I am sorry this did not work out for you. If you ever want to try again, try the "fat at the very end" trick, knead it in by hand, and I am sure you will find a difference. Please let me know if you do.
Kind regards, Jane