Stollen based on old Dutch recipe

It might not be December yet, so not THE time for Christmas stollen but don’t fool yourself by its name. This bread is just tasty and awesome all year round with some butter on it with your coffee at coffee time... This recipe is based on an old Dutch recipe that was published in the 60’s and I kind of made it my own after giving it several tries. So here is my version of the recipe.

Christmas stollen (recipe for one loaf)

Mix the flour, salt, brown sugar and lemon peel grater in a bowl. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl. Stir the yeast with the lukewarm milk until the yeast dissolves and melt the butter. but make sure not to heat the butter too much.

Add the beaten eggs, yeast and milk mix and the melted butter to the little ditch in the middle of the bowl. Stir from the inside out until mixed properly. Knead the dough until the dough is smooth and doesn’t stick to your hands any more.

Cover the bowl with dough and let it rise for 1 to 1,5 hour. It should be about doubled in size.

In the meanwhile grate the orange and cut the succade in small pieces. Wash the raisins and Zante currants and let 300g soak in bowl with warm water, drench the remaining 100g of Raisins and Zante currants in Dark rum or Amaretto (choose depending on your taste and/or availability) until the dough has risen for about 1 hour. Drain the raisins and Zante currant and dry them a bit (mainly the water soaked ones).

Prepare the almond paste. If you have unpeeled almonds, put them in a pan with cold water and put it on the stove to heat for a couple of minutes. Drain the pan’s contents. Peal and dry them. If you have peeled almonds already you can skip this step although i like to quickly rinse my almonds anyways.

Grind the almonds, with your kitchen machine for example, until they become pasty. Add the sugar, half an egg, lemon peel grater and lemon juice through the ground almonds and continue grinding until you have a good looking almond paste. TIP: You can store the almonds paste in a closed jar and it will stay good for weeks. After a week or two the almond paste is richer and more full in taste.

When the dough looks doubled, take it from the bowl and gently knead the orange peel grater, succade, drained raisins and Zante currants through it until well distributed. Roll or press the dough to a thick yet flattened oval shaped piece. If you have made the almond paste, create a little roll shape of the almond paste and put it near the the center of the oval dough piece.

Fold the dough for about 3/4th in the length and roll it up tightly in a way that the almond paste roll is across 90% of the length inside the roll. Put the rolled up dough in a greased bread tin and let it rise for the second time a 30 to 45 minutes.

Preheat the traditional oven to 200C/392F (hot air oven 180C/356F) and bake it in total for 30 minutes. After 20 minutes reduce the heat to 160C/320F (hot air 140C/284F). When your stollen looks ready and has a nice light brown crust (This should be after this 30 minutes) take it out and let it cool down. Optionally you can grease the crust on top with some butter and decorate it with some sifted powder sugar.

And that should be about it... It’s my first time to put a recipe in bakers percentages so I’m not 100% sure if it is correct. However I have used this recipe for the last 3 years and it has been a great success. If you try it out and you make some adjustments, which I know you will in the end, let me know. Still trying to perfect this recipe myself.