Mother’s Christmas stollen
Ingredients:
1500 g flour
½ to ¾ l milk, lukewarm
2x yeast cubes (80 to 100g)
500 g butter
250 g sugar (no more)
600 g sultanas steeped overnight in rum (or a mixture of raisins, currants, sultanas if you like, less than half should be currants)
600 g chopped, shelled almonds
125 g candied lemon peel
125 g candied orange peel
Vanilla sugar (approx. 8 g)
Bitter almond oil, 1 small vial
1 pack of marzipan paste (200 g)
Nutmeg (grated)
Cardamom powder (small pinch)
Peel of one lemon
½ teaspoon of salt
Preparation
Knead the dough in a very large bowl.
Important: the dough must be well kneaded, which takes approx. 1.5 hours. Always knead in one ingredient completely before adding the next one. Kneading aerates the dough. Separate the dough into pieces repeatedly while kneading, and knead each ingredient in until the dough forms a ball that comes away from the bowl. Use a dough scraper to scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl. When it’s finished, it must be the right consistency to come away from the bowl easily. Add milk or flour if required, a little at a time.
- Yeast sponge: sift the flour, make a well into which room-temperature yeast is crumbled, carefully stir the milk together with the yeast, add 4 tablespoons of sugar, cover and leave to rest until the mixture starts to bubble.
- Knead the flour, yeast and milk thoroughly, gradually adding all the milk.
- Cut the butter into small pieces and knead it into the mixture.
- Knead in the sugar.
- Knead in the dried spices.
- Knead in the marzipan.
- Allow sultanas to drain in a sieve before kneading them in.
- Gradually knead in all solid ingredients.
- Form dough balls, put them in the bowl, cover and leave to rise in a warm place (takes about 1.5 hours). Once dough has risen, do not leave to stand for too long.
- Knead dough rapidly.
- Divide into quarters
- Form stollen and roll them out a little with a rolling pin. Place one half of the dough on top of the other, leaving an overhang to form the typical shape, remove all sultanas from the surface and insert them between the two dough halves so that they don’t burn.
- Bake 4 stollen one after the other
Baking
Cover with aluminium foil and bake on 2nd shelf at 150 degrees for 40 to 60 minutes depending on stollen size. Stollen must be baked until it is light brown all over. Remove aluminium foil
Continue baking at 150 degrees (fan oven) for approx. 30 min until the stollen is mid brown – don’t let the bottom get too dark!
Leave on a wire rack to cool.
As soon as it comes out of the oven, brush with knobs of butter and allow to melt. Sprinkle lightly with sifted icing sugar.
Luxury alternative
Place the stollen in an oven dish and drizzle with and/or immerse in melted butter (approx. 250 g butter per stollen), place on a wire rack to drain, sprinkle with a little sifted icing sugar.
Be careful moving the warm stollen as it will break easily.