OMG! You should smell this house right now! I have died and gone to Culinary Heaven!
I’ve said over and over that our baking has been the best, ever. And I’m here to say it, again. It’s the best, ever!
I got the recipe from a friend several years ago and finally decided to make it last year.
The first stollen I made was horrible. I totally and completely screwed it up. Don’t ask me how – I just did. I actually threw it all away and re-did it. It was really good the second time, but this year?!? Perfection! Absolute perfection. Oma guided my hand.
It started with the dough. It felt right from the beginning. Even though I’m a baker, there are a lot of things I’ve just never baked before, and Stollen was one of those things.
When you bake a lot, you learn how to touch and feel dough. It speaks to you – you just need to learn how to listen with your hands. Today it spoke and I listened. It said “be patient”.
It takes a lot longer to rise than the breads I’m used to making. It also takes longer to knead. Of course, the breads I’m used to making don’t have a pound and a half of butter in them! Patience.
I cut the recipe in half because 4 loaves is more than I really need to have in the house.
Oma’s Christmas Stollen
This recipe is huge and makes 8 loaves (it freezes well – in Germany, it’s traditional to consume the last Christmas stollen on Easter) so feel free to cut it in half. It isn’t overly sweet and heavy and nasty like traditional fruitcakes – it’s more like a sweet bread, and the butter in the recipe makes it very flaky.
- 6 pounds flour
- 2 cups white sugar
- 7 oz fresh yeast (about 80 gr dry)
- 1 lb golden raisins
- 1 t almond extract
- 3 t salt
- 3 lb butter
- 1 quart whole milk
- 1 lb dark raisins
- 1 lb blanched almonds, ground finely (but not overly fine – you get it)
- 1/2 lb citron, chopped finely (as above) and floured
In a saucepan, heat the milk. Remove from heat and add butter, sugar and salt. When just warm, add yeast. Put into large mixing bowl and begin to add flour, about five pounds, mixing well after each addition. Stir in raisins, citron and almonds. Add almond extract. Mix well and knead on floured board (dough will be a little sticky – you’ll use probably half a pound of flour doing this, which accounts for the six pound total) until it’s very smooth and elastic (about 20 minutes). Put into a covered bowl and let it rise until doubled. Divide dough into 8 parts and flatten each piece into a circle and fold over *almost* in half – the bottom diameter will be larger than the top. Let rise again until doubled and bake at 350° for 35 minutes. When cool, dust heavily with powdered sugar.
The house really isn’t all that warm this time of year, either. I let them rise for several hours, formed the loaves, and let them rise, again, for several hours.
They look beautiful, they smell beautiful, and I know they’re going to taste beautiful.
This is our year. No question about it.
And I think I finally figured out why… It’s because we decided we weren’t going to go crazy and bake a bazillion cookies like we do every year.
Just by cutting back and coming up with fewer batches of everything, the stress went away. Once we decided it just didn’t matter, it all fell into place.
There’s a few things still planned for the next few days and the weekend. And when we get to them, we get to them.
‘Tis the Season to be Jolly!
And we are.
Hello from Oakland, Oma!
For our 2nd annual stollen baking Christmas extravaganza, we wanted to double our (giant) recipe from last year. This one was the only one online we could find that yielded enough to gift away to all our friends and family! And we doubled this recipe too, baked over the course of 2 days. The house reeked of butter.
Thanks Oma!
Our substitutes: The yeast (7oz) amount written may be for fresh yeast – we used 100g of DRY yeast for this recipe. Our research told us 40g dry yeast per 1000g/flour.
We skipped the marzipan and candied oranges for our recipe.
Salt: We may have used around 3 tablespoons of salt instead of 3 teaspoons. It was fine.
EGGS: We added 8 whole eggs to this recipe, because most others online had them. It turned out amazing. We used Italian bread flour as well, so it was flaky yet chewy.
Rising: To proof our giant heap of dough, we put it in a cold oven, and added a casserole pan of boiling water and then went out for trivia night for 2 hours. It had more than doubled in size then!
Baking with butter: After putting the dough in the oven, every 10-15 minutes we would take it out and baste it with more melted butter. The smell was insane. It became a gathering of sorts for the whole household, to watch us paint the loaf periodically with fat. We were chanting “butter, butter, butter”.
All in all, we probably produced around 40 lbs of stollen. More than any person should ever have. We’ve wrapped them up in plastic and foil and ribbons and we are excited to share them with our loved ones!
Thanks again, Oma! Until next year!
-Hannah and Uncle Hanns
(P.S. Hanns’ German mother used to make this, we have been searching for the loaf that our Oma used to make. So thanks for the recipe and the memories!)
OMG! Hannah and Hanns – That sounds truly fantastic! What a fun couple of days!
Adding the eggs would really make it a lovely sweet dough – and BASTING! I’m drooling!
I did some figuring, and 7 oz of fresh yeast would be about 80 gr, so I made a note on the original recipe. Since the recipe comes from a friend, I never had the original made by her Oma.
Anyway… Happy Baking!!!
Hello again, Tim!
This year would be our 4th annual Stollen fest, and I checked my notes from years past for some extra research and found this page again! What a surprise to find my own message from years ago. It brought a smile to my face reading it and remembering the event.
We had some sad news this year, Hanns suddenly passed in April at the age of 60. It was and is still shocking to us. I kind of dreamt that some day, in a few decades, I could carry on Hanns’ and my stollen tradition with many other accumulated Christmas friends. I just never thought he would leave us this soon. I made the choice to carry on, make a (MUCH SMALLER) batch of loaves, make new memories, drink a toast to him. And that’s what we did!
Though I didn’t supply the luxury ingredients as Hanns would have, I enjoyed soaking the dried fruits and almonds in rum, and used just all-purpose baking flour instead of bread flour. I measured both the vanilla and the yeast with my heart. Like this recipe states, I made sure to be patient with the rising times. The result is a nice cakey texture. In comparison to previous years, we weren’t hovering over the oven as much, ready to slather the baking loaves with melted butter. I did a 6-loaf recipe (so 3/4 batch) and that was perfect for us, a combined baking time of about an hour. (30ish mins per batch). Whoever reads this must remember that one loaf is for taste testing! Afterwards, we felt like it just needed MORE sugar and butter, so I did a couple more layers! I did notice that after cooling the loaves, an extra coat of powdered sugar afterwards doesn’t soak into the butter as much and makes the loaf a lot more pleasing to the eye, if you’re going to store it or gift it.
Gifting: For structural integrity, after I wrap the stollen in plastic wrap, I add a sheet of cardboard to support the bottom, then wrap it all in aluminum with a bow and a candy cane. I halved some of the loaves and wrapped those as well. This year I made the genius move of including a ziploc bag of extra powdered sugar, so recipients can get the full visual snowy effect. I just put that with the bread before wrapping in tinfoil.
All in all, the stollen baking again was a success, and it felt like a great way to honor Hanns and remember him. He was definitely present in spirit. I want to thank you again for providing a good ol’ Oma stollen recipe for us to follow and experiment upon, for 4 years now!
Thanks Oma and thanks TJ.
Bake on!
-Hannah and Uncle Hanns
Hannah!!!
So great to hear from you! I am so sorry to hear of Hanns… I know he was smiling down as you worked that dough and tied those bows!
There truly is something magical about baking traditions! Even though there are Christmas recipes we know by heart, the stained and splattered recipe cards come out every year to have “Aunt Emma” or “Aunt Dolores” or “Uncle Rudy” – and everyone else who has ever shared a recipe with us – as we create.
I do love slightly “over-the-top” gifting! I like to get huge rolls of cellophane and cardboard cake circles or oblongs or festive holiday plates – and doilies, of course! We have pared down the baking – but not the presentations! (Christmas Craziness)
We were back east for Christmas this year – first trek back since 2020 – and had a blast. The kids who we were teaching the family recipes to back in the early 2000s are now in their late 20s & 30s and have mastered them! Perfection – and the aunts and uncles before us sent many a thumbs up!
Here’s to many more years of baking!
Tim & Victor…..