Christ Stollen

A recipe for Dresden Stollen.(some would say a recipe for disaster)

Ingredients:

750g of flour

60g of fresh yeast

¼ l of milk

4 dspn of warm water

130g sugar

300g butter

1 pkt of vanilla sugar (or if you make your own about 2 level tea spoons)

1 tsp salt

1 unwaxed lemon (but still wash it before hand)

2 egg yolks

100g candied lemon peal

100h candied orange peal

100g raisins

2 dspn rum (can be a bit more if you like )

100g chopped blanched almonds

75g butter to brush and coat

200g icing sugar to dust

A bit of flour for the work surface and some butter for the baking tray (or use baking paper or a silicon baking sheet)

Method:

Sieve the flour into a bowl, make a hole in the middle and crumble the yeast into this with about 50ml of the warm water, milk, 2 tea spoons of sugar mixture, pull some of the flour from the sides to cover the yeast mixture. Cover and leave at warm room temperature for 15 minutes until it starts to “work” (you will see the bubbles).

While waiting melt butter in the remaining milk, mix the flour/yeast mixture together and add the milk butter liquid, rest of the sugar, vanilla sugar, salt, zest of the lemon, the egg yolks. Now mix and if you don’t have a dough hook, your going to get some muscle power because you need to knead it for 10 minutes, until the dough is working (bubbles)

Put the candied peal, raisins etc in with the rum (cover and leave overnight)

Put the dough into a polythene bag and leave overnight in a cool place (not the fridge), the dough should now have doubled in size.
Flour the work surface turn out the dough and give it a good kneading about 20 secs, spread the peal mixture and the almonds on top and quickly knead this into the dough.

Let the dough work for 20 mins, then form it into a roll and roll out with the rolling pin so that it is a rectangle (it doesn’t matter if it is uneven this is not engineering design) ,about 2.5cm thick. Fold one long edge to the middle and fold the other over the top of the first, pat it lightly together to make the typical stolen form. Cut in half otherwise you may have a bit of difficulty getting it into the oven and as sure as hell you'll have plenty getting it out.

Put the stolen onto the buttered (or baking paper or silicon sheet) baking tray and let it rest for 30 mins, put into a pre-heated 180°C oven for 1 ½ hrs. Remove and before cool.

Melt the remaining butter and brush the top and sides, then dust with the icing sugar.

Note if you like marzipan you can put a roll of it into the centre before folding over, BUT this will not be a Dresdener Stollen ;-) As this one wasn't!!!

NB I would like to thank My dear friends Jaquie and Ian for their Editorial skills. Spotted a few glaring mistakes). His wonderful webb site is well worth a visit, as is his smashing bed and breakfast in France http://www.souvigne.com/