• The morning before you want to make the stollen you need to do two things:
•  Soak the fruit and nuts in the alcohol.  Cover and leave until the next day.
• Refresh a white wheat sourdough starter so that you have 500 grams to use for the stollen.  The 1857 sourdough starter (which the Clink also uses) is equal volumes of flour and water.  Yours may be equal weights or slightly different but just adjust the amount of flour in your final dough so that the final dough is soft but manageable.  A typical bun dough.

The evening before you want to make the stollen you need to do one thing:

• Take 500 g of your refreshed white wheat sourdough and add 250 ml of warm milk (see above), 500 g flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar.  You really need to work this with your hands to get it together.  It will be dry and hard to incorporate the flour.  Try hard and don’t worry.  Cover it and leave it at least 12 hours if not 16.

The morning you want to bake the stollen:

• To the (now extremely bubbly pre dough) add 500 g flour, 150 g sugar, 150 g butter, 75 g lard, 1 tsp salt, grated lemon zest.  Knead this for a good 10-15 minutes.  You may need to adjust the flour or the fat content.  If the dough is too slack add a bit of flour.  If it is too stiff add more butter/lard.  The dough must be soft almost like a brioche dough.  Let the kneaded dough rest in the bowl for 1 hour and then fold in the soaked fruit gently.  Put the dough back in a bowl, cover, and let rest for 2 hours.
• Take the dough out and divide into two pieces.  Press each piece into a rectangle and then fold one side into the middle and the other side over the top.  If you would like to use a sausage of marzipan (we prefer our stollen commando), lay the sausage of marzipan in the middle of the dough and fold the dough around the marzipan – wrapping it up completely and sealing it in bu pinching the edges together.
• Place the loaves on a baking tray on baking parchment and cover this and let it rest for two hours.
• Preheat the oven to 250 C.  Place the stollen in and turn the heat down to 180 C.  Bake for 50 minutes.
• When done, remove from the oven and brush them with 75 g melted butter.  Sprinkle with vanilla sugar and dust with icing sugar.  Let cool completely and then dribble 75 g more melted butter on them and then dust with more icing sugar.  Let cool, wrap well in baking parchment/greaseproof paper and let mature for 4-6 weeks.  Slice, butter, and have with tea!  That’s what we will be doing at The Clink in mid December.  You are welcome to join us.