When I was growing up in Alaska, one of our neighbors used to bring us her homemade stollen every Christmas. I have searched for years for a recipe that was not impossible to make and is true to the one my neighbor made. Lucky for me, a translator friend provided me this authentic recipe from her mother in Germany. It worked very well for me and is forgiving (in the Colorado altitude). See my notes below as well. And best of all, it reminds me of the one of my childhood. Success!
Since this recipe is straight from Europe, it uses metric measurements. I have a scale that uses both metric and US measurements, so conversion was easy. You can also look online for conversions, but weighing the ingredients will probably be the most accurate.
Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C (or 475 F)
Reduce to 180-200 degrees C (or 375) when baking.
Bake for 30-40 minutes (middle rack) until done (or under bake so the middle is still yeasty and moist, as my friend suggests).
- 500g flour
- 60g fresh or cake yeast (to use dry yeast instead, note that this equals about 1.3 oz of dry yeast - this is what I used and it turned out fine, but the original recipe called for cake yeast)
- 100g sugar
- 1 pack of vanilla sugar (you can get these in international stores -- I have some from the last time I was in France. I see you can also get it on Amazon.)
- 1/8 liter of milk (lukewarm)
- 2 eggs
- 150-200g butter (no substitute)
- 1 pinch of salt
- 50g candied lemon peel
- 50g candied orange peel
- (or candied cherries, other candied fruits that you like)
- 200g slivered almonds (yes, that many)
- 200g raisins (yes, that many) - I used dried currants because I don't like raisins that much
Prepare a yeast dough using the ingredients above, using your favorite method. I let my bread maker do the work through the first rise. For the first rise, let the dough rise sufficiently in a warm place (this can take 1-2 hours).
After the first rise, punch down and work in the fruits you have selected and the almonds, again, using your preferred method. There were too many fruits/nuts for my bread maker to handle, so I have done it by manually kneading in the fruits/nuts and also by using the kneading attachment on my stand mixer. There are a lot of ingredients to mix in at this stage, so make sure they get worked in well.
Once you have worked in the fruits/nuts, shape the dough into a long loaf (stollen style) on a buttered cookie sheet. Let the dough rise again, in a warm place. I do not seem to get a lot of rise the second time around, but it always ends up fine in the end, once baked.
After baking, brush the loaf with melted butter and then coat it with powdered sugar.
Enjoy!
