Not So Stollen – Christmas 2013

This Not So Stollen version is once againis based on a modification to a real Dresden Christmas Stollen recipe that was posted by nellapower here:  Refer to it for most of the method with a few exceptions below.

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25407/dresden-christmas-stollen

 Last year’s stollen can be found here:

 Not So Stollen

Lucy figured out last year, if you replaced the commercial yeast with SD it would be SD Stollen and if you replaced some of the white flour with other whole grains..... it would be a SD Multi-grain Stollen that tasted better? And if you used YW for part of the levain then you would be as nuts as my apprentice.    But others might not think so.

I'd be surprised there isn't a SD YW, multi-grain stollen out there somewhere but I can’t find it easy enough – except for the one we did last year.   Just about everything in the bread world has already been done by some baker like nellapower already but this stollen has landed far, far from Dresden and it might be called something else like Sourdough YW Multi-grain Dried Fruit Bread with 5 Different Hooch’s and one Pooch..

Of course, Lucy being Lucy, that is not all my apprentice did to this once fine recipe either. She is determinately diabolical with her changes and modifications to just about any bread - and can’t be stopped when she gets rolling, plus this one has more opportunity for her to get he paws wet.

She still wasn’t at all sure SD alone could lift this even more hefty lump of multi-grain stollen goodness properly LL by itself so, once again, instead of commercial yeast, we threw in some YW for the liquid in the SD levain to give it an uplifting boost.

We didn’t use a 24 hour 1% starter, counter top levian build with all of the whole grains in the levain like last year.  We are older and didn’t think we could last another 24 hour 1% build and wiser since sour will never come though in this bread.   So we put the whole grains in the levains but also added the normal amount of YW and SD to speed things along with our non standard standard 2 stage build.  We will do a 3 stage separate build for YW and SD next year.

We used home ground spelt, rye, farro, kamut and some ww for fun.   Lucy tossed in some AP into the levain this year because she felt like having some ‘Fun with Flour’.  She really loves the tiny Krup’s coffee grinder we used to make the whole berries less chunky and more suitable for stollen.  We made our own citrus peels again this year by taking off the skin only with a XOX peeler and boiled them 3 times before dying them and coating them in home made vanilla sugar.

 Lucy upped the alcohol again this year, even over last years sodden fruit fest, by adding some bourbon to the home made limoncello and arancello that were there last year to enhance the orange and lemon peel.  We also used the traditional dark rum and amaretto too - in total about 60% more proportionally than Nellapower’s originl.   No water was required in the fruit soak again this year-- as the fruits had an even harder time trying to soak up this year’s spirit mix.

Lucy once again decided to cut back some of the dried fruits a little but not as much as last year and once again added walnuts and pistachios for a little crunch – now she thinks the crunch is traditional.  She found the YW frozen fruit in the freezer door again this year not knowing that it was saved for this bake. Once again it was apple and cherry pieces. 

To cut some of the fat, not that it reduces it much with all the butter in this recipe, we replaced all of the cream with Lite Mexican Media Creama.   Who knew they would come out with a half the fat Mexican table cream in a can – way to go Nestles.   We also chucked in 25 g of butter flavored Crisco this year, on top of the butter just to mix the fatty things up more than usual plus…. Lucy though the ingredient list was a little short.

Like last year, we decided to replace some of the white sugar with dark brown sugar hoping it would pair better with the dark rum that is made from molasses if you buy the good stuff, but once again, this years dark rum was probably not that good and probably made from HFCS.

We added some nutmeg to the spice list again thinking a little more spice would go well with the extra hooch just like it did last year.  Once again we forgot to add the ground almonds to the fruit to sop of some of its wetness.  Lucy put the ground almonds in the dough flour by mistake, again and is now a new tradition it seems.

 We added 60 g or bench flour when we added the fruits to keep the overall hydration closer to the original.  We added 75 g more hooch than we should have used to begin with…. so the flour would have come in even more handy……. if Lucy had hands

Usually we would put a sunset in here but, the moon rise last night was stupendous - the clouds and orange tree made it special.

We basically cut last year’s recipe for 2 loaves in half so the kneading was a breeze this year.  Once again we changed the method slightly by cutting in all the fat into the flour before adding the media crema which were supposed to be part of the levain but we used YW and water there instead.

For some reason a volunteer jalapeno pepper plant sprung up in total shade under the orange tree this year.  Never had one ther before.

This made the kneading easy since we could do 10 minutes of slap and folds before adding in the fruits and nuts and the 60 g of bench flour.  The dough was very manageable this year and the dough tightened itself back up as we folded the add ins into the dough.  This method is much closer to short crust pasty and stollen is much closer to short crust pasty than it is to bread anyway.

The minneola tree looks like it did well thsi year but it is the worst year in so many.... 

This year we bulk fermented the dough in a bowl on the counter for 6 hours before we shaped it and put it in the fridge for a 15 hours retard.  The dough set up into a hard lump in the fridge with all that butter and it did not proof one iota in the cold.  So we left it on the counter on a heating pad for 6 hours until it did look ready for the oven which it never really did.

Made Italian sausage sliders out of the last of Mark Sinclair's rolls - just as good as the hamburgers.

Italian sausage slider with home made dijon, butternut squash soup with Parmesan, pickled Serranos and red pepper for the slider, steamed Italian summer squash, salad from the pot garden, brie, sweet and white potato baked wedge fries with BBQ sauce - Yummy!

Oddly the dough cracked through the bottom at about the 4 hour mark of the final on the counter but, since it hadn’t really rose much.  I ignored it and let it go another 2 hours.  It still didn’t look like much proofing had gone on in the 12 hours total it spent on the counter before and after the retard.  I pinched the bottom closed before we un-molded it on parchment paper and a peel and slid it in the oven on the bottom stone,

Sliders were served with a nice salad from the pot garden.

My apprentice still thinks she might be related to Rin Tin Tin.  Why she thinks this might be a possibility is strange indeed with her being so short legged and stupid – a polar opposite of Rin Tin Tin if there ever was one.

This year’s Not So Stollen version actually looks like a stollen instead of the flat pancakes of last year – yea!.  It will not be wrapped in cotton cloth and placed for 6 weeks in a beautiful blue holiday tin with silver snowflakes like last year though.   With 8 days till Christmas, this stollen will be lucky not to be completely gone by then – if it isn’t stolen first.

We baked it for 20 minutes at 375 F with steam and for 70 minutes at 350 F convection.  The oven was turned off when the stolen hit 203 F.  Even a year later we still don’t know what temperature it was supposed to be in the inside when done so we went with last year’s temperature of 205 F before removing it to a cooling rack.

 We did not have to cover it with foil either like we did at the at the 50 minute mark last year so it wouldn’t get too brown.  For some reason, this one did not spread too much either but you can’t say it sprang much, but it did crack like it was trying to do something on the puffy side.

This Not SO Stollen - 2013 looks and smells terrific and, as Karin says, there is no reason to wait 6 weeks to eat it - so we won’t and if we want another one later we will make another one,

Once again, we are getting pretty far away from the nellapower’s original recipe for this Modified Dresden Christmas Stollen - Version 2 even though they are still quite similar in concept except for all those pesky minor changes :-)  Not So Stollen is still the perfect name for this unusual attempt to make an alien stollen of the 3rd kind.

We buttered it as it came out of the oven and later covered it in a lemon drizzle per the GMA’s and then a thicker dusting of powdered sugar was applied.  I see French toast on the Christmas breakfast horizon for some reason.

Thanks to nellapower for posting her original recipe and her help in our making something close to it conceptually and to the GMA’s for the lemon drizzle idea that they put on their fine stollen. 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Formula