CHRISTMAS STOLLEN
The stollen or German Christmas Bread is one of my favorite Christmas’s recipes.
It’s a sweet bread with raisins or candied fruits and filled with almond paste, incredibly delicious.
It seems that this recipe is tipycal from Germany, from the city of Dresden and Germans enjoy this amazing bread all Christmas as a rich dessert.
It’s a really sweet and buttery bread, that’s why I recommend you to use strong flour or bread flour if you can’t find strong and knead with patience, if you can use a stand mixer or kitchen robot it will be really useful.
The almond filling you can see into the stollen is completely optional, I love it, but if you prefer to enjoy your German Christmas Bread without almond paste it will be delicious anyway.
Talking about raisins, I let them rest for an hour with a rum teaspoon and tangerine zest, but it’s also optional, you can drain them in orange juice, or add them directly to the dough, the option you choose will be delicious.
Christmas stollen
Equipment
- Oven
Ingredients
- 2 cups Strong flour
- 3 tablespoons Strong flour
- 2+1/4 teaspoons Dry yeast Or 25 grams fresh yeast
- 1/2 cups Warm milk
- 1/2 cups Granulated sugar
- 2 tablespoons Granulated sugar
- 3/4 cups Unsalted butter Room temperature
- 2 units Eggs
- 1 cup Raisins
- 1 teaspoon Rum
- 1 unit Tangerine or orange zest (optional)
- 1 pinch Salt
- 1 cup Confectioner's sugar to dust As much as you want
Almond filling
- 1+3/4 cups Almond flour
- 1+1/2 cups Confectioner's sugar Or granulated sugar.
- 1 pinch Salt
- 1 unit Egg white
Instructions
- You can sarta preparing the filling. Mix the almond flour, sugar and egg white and l et it cool into the fridge with film forming a log.
- To start with the stollen we mix the sugar and flour, a pinch of salt and fresh yeast. If we use instant yeast let it rest for some minutes on two tablespoons of warm milk before adding to the flour (and use two tablespoons of milk less later)
- Now we can start adding the rest of the warm milk, the eggs and start kneading.
- When we have a nice dough and without stop kneadning we can add the butter bit by bit and keep kneading until we have a nice dough that doesn’t stick to our hands or the kitchen bowl.
- Now we can add the raisins and knead for a minute and let the dough rest for an hour covered with film until it doubles its size.
- With your hands knead for a minute and extend the dough with a roll and place the almond filling in the middle
- Fold the dough covering the almond paste and let it rest again for an hour covered on your baking tray, it will need some space left because it will double its volume again
- Preheat your oven 356º Fahrenheit.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes, depending on your oven and being careful not to burn it, you can cover the stollen with foil the last minutes of baking.
- Let the stollen cool and dust with abundant confectioner’s sugar.
This recipe is plentiful of sugar, butter and almonds, so baking one stollen with the quantities I propose means dessert for at least 6-8 people.
What a beautiful Christmas stollen! I always wondered how one would taste – and yours is a beautiful one to try with!
Thank you sooo much, if you love sweet breads and almonds I am sure you will love this stollen.
Looks amazing. I may be trying this out this weekend!
Thank you Kristina,
Hope you will love it, any doubts or suggestions just let me know
Looks so yummy I may try for Christmas ! I love the decoration ! Very cute
Thank you soooo much
One of my favourite Christmas desserts.