Mini Stollen

It’s bakemas 2020!

If it’s your first bakemas here, welcome. It is my annual mini-series in which I show you how to make a various Christmas themed baked goods – perfect if you want to impress your family and/or friends or if you’re hosting a festive get together.

Today I’m sharing my take on stollen – if you haven’t tried this bread before, you’re for sure missing out.

This bread is the perfect addition to any festive celebrations you may be having this year. It’s sweet, rich and indulgent – the perfect bake to bring to the table. I have taken inspiration from a traditional stollen that you’d find in Germany – it’s commonly eaten around Christmas time when it may be called Weihnachtsstollen.

Starting with an enriched dough, studded with a selection of dried fruit. A marzipan centre and finished with a generous amount of melted butter and a copious amount of icing sugar.

Anyway, let’s get started, shall we?

 

Ingredients:

Dough:

375g strong bread flour.

1 tsp salt.

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg.

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.

60g butter.

45g granulated sugar.

30g fresh yeast.

175ml milk.

1 egg.

1 lemon zest

85g currants.

55g raisins.

35g mixed peel.

55g glacé cherries.

40g flaked almonds.

175g marzipan.

 

Finishing:

melted butter.

icing sugar.

 

Method:

Before you get started on the recipe, you’ll want to do some prep work. Start by weighing up all of your ingredients, lining baking trays with parchment paper and grab any equipment you may need, such as a stand mixer, mixing bowl and spatula.

To start on the bread, grab a large mixing bowl and place in the bread flour, salt, grated nutmeg and ground cinnamon. Whisk these together until they are combined.

Then you can go ahead and add in the butter, granulated sugar, yeast, milk, egg and lemon zest. Mix everything together over a low speed to start with for 2 minutes, followed by 6 minutes over a high speed. The dough will come together but will be soft, this is because it’s enriched.

When there is about a minute left to the mixing time, you can go ahead and add in the dried fruit and flaked almonds – just mix these in until they are fully incorporated and fairly distributed throughout the dough.

Transfer the dough from the mixing bowl and place onto a well floured surface and give it a brief knead, just to incorporate some flour to help with the stickiness of the dough. Bring it back into a ball shape and place into a lightly oiled bowl, covering with clingfilm and then leaving it somewhere warm to prove for around and hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

Once the dough has had its first prove, you can go ahead and remove it from the bowl and knock it back. The process of knocking the dough back is to remove the gasses that have built up in the dough during the first prove – ring the dough back into a ball shape.

Weigh the dough and divide that amount by 6 – this will be the weight for each stollen. So scale the dough to said weight and cover with clingfilm while you work on them.

Take the marzipan and divide that by 6 and form little batons – this is the centre of the stollen.

Roll your balls of dough out to be about 1cm in thickness, then on the one side place the baton of marzipan with a small space to the outer edge. Roll the dough over the marzipan until its covered and theres only a little flap on the other side (this is how I was taught to make them at college while I was there).

Repeat the process with the remaining dough and marzipan batons and then place onto lined baking trays and cover loosely with clingfilm and allow to prove until they have proved up well. While they are having the second prove, preheat your oven to 180˚c.

Now they are finished with the second prove, you can go ahead and remove the clingfilm from on top of the dough and then bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes or until well coloured.

Once baked, remove from the oven and place straight onto a cooling rack and generously brush with melted butter, then you can go ahead and dredge them with icing sugar, don’t be tight with the icing sugar.

Then they are ready to eat, I’d allow to cool down before you try to eat them.

That’s all for today guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back soon with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my other social’s – Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. The YouTube tutorial will be linked down below.