You've Stollen My Heart

As i've mentioned already, winter is my least favorite time of year, and this week's freezing rain and frigid temperatures have done nothing to lift my spirits.  I also must confess to having a bit of a bah humbug attitude toward the holidays, for which i blame the American retailers who have been torturing me with Christmas carols since Halloween.  It's hard to actually get excited about the holidays when you've been bombarded with exhortations to empty your wallet on inflatable yard ornaments and other useless items in the name of Jesus for a quarter of the year.  This is probably why i always end up doing my holiday shopping at the last possible moment:  i become so inured to the season that i end up forgetting how close Christmas is until about December 20th, which has been really good for all the overnight delivery companies.

However, all is not gloomy here, as i am never more prolific in the kitchen than during these short days and freezing nights.  Since i cannot skip down the slippery sidewalks, i bask in the glow of a warm stove.  To counter American consumerism run amok, i tend to take on the most arduous and intricate culinary adventures, and send to friends and family boxes of handmade chocolates and Jackson Pollack-painted gingerbread men.  Truth be told, about now, the kitchen is usually covered in cocoa, there are smudges of chocolate on the refrigerator door, and there is powdered sugar and flour dusted over most surfaces as i race to finish the 8th kind of cookie so we can get them boxed up and out the door.  Every year i've been upping the ante on difficulty, and last year this meant delving into the Culinary Institute of America's textbook tome on chocolate making, the end result of which was that in addition to the 8 kinds of cookies, there were grand marnier truffles and raspberry ganache filled chocolates made in a polycarbonate mold and dusted with edible ruby pixie dust.  



Sadly, this year, there hasn't been enough time to bake any cookies (as it was, I had to stay up until 5am to finish the Thanskgiving pies), and as the clock ticks down and the work doesn't let up, i fear i will be driven to give up and go to the chocolate shop down the street and just purchase truffles for everyone.  Of course, this would actually be cheaper than what i normally end up spending and they're handmade, too, just not by me.  Perhaps it's my Catholic upbringing, but i really feel like if it's too easy - if i can just waltz in and point to the case and have them put it in a pretty little box with a pretty little bow, and finish shopping for ten people in 15 minutes - then it's cheating and i end up feeling guilty.  


Anyway, a few weeks ago, a friend of mine proposed taking a stollen class at DC's amazing kitchen supply boutique, Hill's Kitchen, and i enthusiastically agreed.  On my side of the family, my mother's clan is the dominant culture, and they've stuck to their French traditions, such as opening presents after midnight mass, and the dessert of choice is the laboriously intense bûche de noël, served with glasses of champagne for all (even the kids, which was the total highlight of my year).  My mother always makes the meringue mushrooms; i tend to cheat and use marzipan which you can just mold with your fingers.  My spouse's side of the family (who find my bûche efforts exhausting just to watch) has infused its holiday traditions with their years spent in Heidelberg, Germany, and so every year they have a giant 20 lb. tin of German Christmas treats sent from Nürnberg that is painted with scenes of medieval German villages and is full of about 20 packages of different kinds of delectable lebkuchen and stollen.  And other cookies that i don't really like as much, so i ignore them as i shamelessly and greedily dig past them for the chocolate-covered lebkuchen.  Anyway, i thought it would be great fun to make them a homemade stollen this year, and since i've essentially done nothing to keep up with the Now Serving section of this blog, thought i'd share my stollen class experience with you.


The History of Stollen - Is It a Swaddled Savior?  Or a Mine Shaft Entrance?
The generic definition of stollen is a bread filled with rum-soaked dried fruit and sometimes nuts.  But its actual history is considerably more complicated and pretty entertaining.  Supposedly, stollen was a bread originally made by Germanic pagans that was co-opted, like everything else, by the Christians.  Stollen was originally called streizel, which, according to Wikipedia, came from the word strüzel or stroczel, or "awaken" (Old Prussian: troskeilis), which came to mean "early-baked loaf of bread," and was a less-than-festive sounding concoction of flour, yeast, oil, and water.  Stollen was first served as a Christmas pastry by the Saxon court in 1427, and was supposed to resemble the swaddled infant Jesus.  Dresden, the official home of stollen, has a namesake Streizelmarkt, which is one of Germany's largest Christmas markets and has been going steady since 1434.  Apparently the Dresden folks did not see the Son of God in this loaf of bread.  They thought it clearly looked like a mine shaft entrance (apparently Dresden is home to lots of silver and tin mines), and so renamed it stollen, which is German for mine shaft.  (I guess we all see what we want to see.)


Back in those early days, stollen was made with oil because the Catholic church banned the use of milk and butter during the Advent season, which used to be a time of fasting.  However, not only did this result in a dry, crappy stollen, but the northern Europeans felt the butter ban was unfair since oil in that area was scarce, expensive, and apparently had to be made from turnips (how, i can't even imagine - i'd think blood would be more easily gotten, frankly).  So a couple of 15th century German aristocrats petitioned the pope for an exception to the rule.  This is hilariously described by Bäckerei & Konditorei Gnauck, one of the official Dresden stollen bakeries as follows:


In 1450 Elector Ernst of Saxony and his brother Albrecht applied to the Pope Nikolaus V for an abrogation of the butter-prohibition. The Vatican bureaucracy was a hard test of Saxon Bakers patience. Five popes must die, before Pope Innocenz VIII sent a letter in 1491, known as "butter-letter", to Dresden. In that letter he had declared that richer ingredients were allowed. In return, the Dresden Stollen bakers had to pay a "fine". The money was used for building of [the Freiburg Cathedral].


I don't know if it was deliberate or an amusing translation issue, but i love how "five popes must die" (did the bakers have something to do with it?) before the ticked off Saxons get the right - for a fee, of course - to no longer offend God by using butter in their stollen - well, stollen for the nobility, anyway, which was the limit of the original exception.  Because, you know, God will look the other way if you slip him a little cash under the table.  (You say selling of indulgences, i - and Martin Luther's Open Letter to The Christian Nobility (look for fn 16) - say bribery.)

The next stop in this long history is when Heinrich Drasdao, a baker in Saxony, decides that the original formula is embarrassingly lacking for a Christmas cake, so tosses some dried fruit into the mix, which then becomes the standard recipe and vast improvement over the original.  The bakers of Dresden first enter the World's Largest Stollen Contest in 1560, when they present the nobles with two "Weihnachstollen," each 1.5 meters long and weighing 36 pounds.  As usual, this is the beginning of a long competition, whose next major marker was in 1730, when King Augustus the Strong of Poland, an 18th century party boy, decides to amuse himself and impress the population by throwing the first Stollenfest, for which he ordered the Dresden bakers to make a 1.7 tonne, 27 foot long stollen large enough for everyone in town to have a piece.  This endeavor required the Court Architect, Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, to design a special oven for baking this monster, which is how the planner of Warsaw, Poland, added "Giant Stollen Oven" to his portfolio. 

I can only imagine what the aliens will think was happening when they see this.

Despite breaks here and there for various wars over the centuries, Stollenfest continues today on the second Sunday of Advent.  The stollen now weighs an average of 3 or 4 tonnes, and is ceremoniously cut with the Grand Dresden Stollen Knife, a 4 foot silver-plated replica of the original one used in 1730.  This is apparently still an architectural as well as culinary feat, requiring 60 special ovens to burn for 3 weeks to make 370 stollen "plates" of 25 lbs each, which are then glued together with butter and sugar, loaded onto a special Stollen Wagon, dusted with powdered sugar, and paraded through town, with the Stollen Maiden - yes, there's a Stollen Maiden - waving to the crowd (that's Miss Stollen 2010) .  Plan your trip to next year's Stollenfest and learn more about the festivities here.
 


Stollen Today

Like champagne, true Dresden stollen has to be made by one of the 150 official Dresden bakeries and stamped with a seal of authenticity from the Stollenschutzverband (the Stollen trade protection society) or it isn't really stollen.  In typical German/European fashion, there are official rules for making a stollen - there's even a European Council regulation mandating what it is and who can make it.  If you want to follow the official recipe, here it is:
‘Stollen’ must contain at least the following ingredients: wheat flour (German flour type Nos 405 or 550), whole milk or dried whole-milk powder, granulated sugar, fresh butter or clarified butter, candied orange and/or lemon peel, sultanas, sweet and bitter almonds, lemon zest, table salt, icing sugar, spices.
- They must not contain the following ingredients: artificial flavourings, additives which have been added directly, margarine.  [Ed. Note: what on earth are additives which have not been added directly??]
- The following ingredients must be included in the following proportions per part of flour:   Fresh butter or corresponding amount of clarified butter: 50 %, Sultanas: 65 %, Candied lemon and/or orange peel: 20 %, Almonds, sweet and bitter: 15 %
- On the outside, ‘Stollen’ have an even form, are suitably browned, and evenly buttered and powdered with sugar. The crumb is light and well-aerated with evenly distributed fruit. ‘Stollen’ have a pure, aromatic and well-rounded smell and taste.


There are all kinds of stollen recipes out there, some with yeast, which gives it more of a panettone-type consistency, and some without, which results in a cross between a scone and a tea bread.  I've had and loved both versions, as well as those with and without marzipan, but there i have a definite preference for the marzipan.  Being in a hurry this time of year, i appreciate the recipe shared with us at Hill's Kitchen, which is a yeast-less quick bread, and quite delicious.  Of course "quick" is a relative term here, and you'll find that if you really want to get serious about stollen (which make really fabulous gifts because they're pretty, they're not terribly fragile, and they last for weeks), then you should actually start around Thanksgiving, when you shove two vanilla beans into a mason jar of powdered sugar and let the fragrance of the vanilla bean infuse the sugar over the next several weeks.  But it's too late for that, so let's just go from here.  You will need the following ingredients and two days (unless you don't have 2 days, in which case, you can do it in an evening if you must):


Holiday Stollen Recipe
8 oz. almond paste
1 egg
2/3 c. sugar

1/2 c. dried currants

1/4 - 1/2 c. golden raisins

1/4 c. each chopped candied ginger, lemon peel, and orange peel (could also substitute dried cherries, apricots, or walnuts for the citrus peel)

2-3 Tbs rum

2.5 cups bread or all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
3/4 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. mace
1/4 tsp. cardamom
3/4 c. ground blanched almonds
1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter


1 c. whole milk ricotta cheese (don't use skim - it'll have too much water)


3 Tbl. melted butter
Vanilla Powdered Sugar


Twas the Night Before Stollen
Make the marzipan filling by combining the almond paste, egg, and sugar in a food processor and mix until a smooth paste is formed.  This may require a few scrapes of the bowl.

Spread the marzipan onto some plastic wrap and roll into a log.  Chill overnight.
If you are reading this and you need your stollen tonight, you can cheat and do this step first and stick the log of marzipan on ice in the freezer while you make everything else.  But it must be thoroughly cold or it will melt during baking.


Day Two

Face the fact that you are going to end up covered in flour and just put on one of the several aprons you have received over the years that you rarely use but wish you had when your favorite cashmere sweater ends up splattered with tomato sauce.  It will also help keep your poncho fronds out of the batter.  No, chili peppers don't match the cuisine, but they're festive anyway.

Combine the dried fruits and rum in a jar or a bowl and add the rum. Give it a good shake or several tosses; do this again a few times while assembling the other ingredients so the rum is absorbed by fruit.

It's unlikely you have found pre-ground blanched almonds, so start by putting some whole or slivered blanched almonds in the food processor and pulse until almonds are chopped, but not powdered.  It's good to have some texture in the bread.  They should look something like this:





Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, mace, cardamom, ground almonds together in a medium mixing bowl.  Cut the stick of butter into small pats and mix together with a pastry cutter or your fingers, until the mixture is a coarse meal similar to pie crust dough:



In a separate bowl, mix the ricotta and rum-soaked fruits.



Add the ricotta mixture to the flour mixture and knead until you have a small ball of dough that is somewhat wetter than scone dough:
 


This dough can be made into one large stollen or two "small" stollen; I've cut mine in half and they're still plenty big (about 10" x 6").


Roll out the dough onto a lightly floured surface into an oval of about 1/2" or more thick, depending on whether you want a taller or flatter stollen (which also then dictates your baking time).  Make an indentation near the center of the oval with the rolling pin or your hands:



Add the marzipan log (half if you're making two), leaving about a half inch from each edge of the dough.  Cook's note:  I found there was almost too much marzipan and you would do well to use 2/3 of the batch you made and save the rest for bear claws you will attempt again later in the month despite the cataclysmic failure that was your last effort. Brush melted butter on one side of the dough and then fold over to make a sort of stollen taco.  You do not want the edges exactly even - it's traditional to see the fold.  Press the edges together gently to seal the marzipan in.



Place stollen(s) on parchment lined cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes for smaller stollen, or 50-60 minutes for a larger stollen.  This is really a ballpark, because you are actually baking them until they are deep golden brown, and i think i was at 50 minutes for my two small stollen, if not longer.





Transfer stollen to cooling rack and brush tops with melted butter and sprinkle with powdered vanilla sugar (note on this - if you didn't have time to make vanilla powdered sugar, you can cheat by adding about 1 teaspoon of vanilla powder to 4 Tbs powdered sugar.  Or you can skip the vanilla part altogether.)

Baby Jesus in diapers? Mine shaft? Blob? It's a pastry Rorschach Test

There you go - two Christmas stollen, ready for giving or eating.  Stollen should be stored for the first day or two in something that allows it to breathe a bit, after that, it needs to be tightly covered, but a stollen can last for 3 weeks.  When serving, it's nice to rewarm it for 10 minutes in a 350 degree oven before eating.  You can see the marzipan filling in the cross section shown at the top of this post.  A nifty trick is to scoop out the marzipan with a knife and spread it across the rest of the piece, as if it were butter.  Fro Hay Vie Knock Ten!!  (Frohe Wiehnachten!!)