Update 19/11/07: Apparently the Village bakery Forums have closed down, so I am reproducing verbatim the recipe for Stollen at the end of this post. Thanks for all the emails!

Also, I can confirm that going the extra mile and tracking down fresh yeast and making your own almond pste creates a far tastier stollen.

I’ve always adored Stollen. I think it may be my ultimate Christmas treat – sweet bread dough bursting with dried fruits wrapped around a wonderfully thick layer of marzipan. All of my favourite things (with the exception of chocolate) in one! Until I stumbled over a recipe for it on the Village Bakery Bread Forum, I’d never considered making it myself. The recipe looked straightforward enough, once I figured out that I should use fresh yeast, so I decided to give it a whirl. As its a baker’s recipe, everything is weighed, even the liquids. Fingers crossed…

My first disaster of the day was with the yeast my lovely husband had popped in the fridge to defrost. It had inexplicably turned to liquid by the time I woke up this morning. Most odd. All the bread books I’ve read say that you can freeze fresh yeast and defrost it successfully, so I don’t have a clue what happened. After rummaging around in the fridge, I found about 10g of yeast that I bought last week. It still looked like putty and smelt okay, so I decided to try it and see how it worked out. Mercifully the recipe started off with a sponge so I’d know pretty quickly if the yeast was dead. I’m still bothered by the liquid yeast – I wonder if anyone has any ideas why it melted/liquified???

Anyway, the sponge rose perfectly (milk, flour, sugar and yeast) despite me not getting it perfectly smooth. Phew, the yeast is okay. Whilst it was rising I weighed out the dried fruit, butter, salt, sugar and flour. The flour, salt, sugar and butter got blitzed together in the food processor until all the butter was blended in and it was pale golden. Once the sponge started to die back a little, I dumped the flour mixture and fruit on top and then added the eggs and rum which I’d carefully weighed out. I’m intriegued to see what the flavour will be like as other stollen recipes have you soak the fruit in the rum overnight. Anyway, I mixed it all together to a stiff but sticky dough. The recipe said that you should use a mixer but I don’t have one; so I turned the dough out onto the worktop (well floured) and gave it a quick knead using Dan Lepard’s instructions for working with very soft doughs. I patted it out into a large rectangle, folded it in half, and then folded it three times as if you were folding a blanket or towel. I did this three times and then popped it back into the bowl (dusted with flour) and left it to rise for 1� hours.

I decided to pop out to the post office whilst the dough rose. This seemed like a great idea as I had lots of letters and parcels to post. However, I failed to take into account the huge queues at Christmas due to everyone else having exactly the same idea. Forty-five minutes later (bear in mind that it takes 3 minutes to get to the post office), I got home and dashed into the kitchen to make the marzipan filling. Thankfully this was very quick to do – blitz ground almonds, caster sugar and one egg in the food processor until bound together in a ball. I added in some more ground almonds to make it firmer and this worked well.

Shaping the stollen turned out to be very easy. The dough had become much less sticky and as smooth as it could possibly be, as it was chock-a-block with dried fruit. I divided the dough and marzipan into four and then pulled and stretched the dough into shape. The marzipan was much harder to deal with. The first piece I tried to roll out and I had to add loads of flour to stop it sticking to everything. I hope this hasn’t ruined the taste…. The next piece I tried patting onto the dough as I patted and stretched it into shape. This worked quite well but still not perfect. The last piece I ended up rolling out between sheets of clingfilm and placing onto the dough. This worked really well and I’ll definitely do it this way next year.

I have to confess that I fiddled with the oven temperature. Gas Mark 7 (or 210C) seemed far too high for a 45 minute cooking time. St Delia and others cook their stollen at 190C so after an initial 10 minutes at 210C, I turned the oven down to 190C and waited anxiously. It seems I was right. The stollen were perfectly done at 40 minutes. Only one actually looks stollen-shaped and its the one that’s exploded slightly. Still, thats not bad since I’m normally really bad at shaping dough. I seem to be improving lots this month!

Following the recipe again, I brushed the stollen with copious amounts of melted butter on all sides and let them cool. Once they felt cold to the touch I sifted over lots and lots of icing sugar.

I’m happy to report that the stollen are absolutely gorgeous! Very tasty indeed and the marzipan flavour does come through really well. You can even see the swirl of marzipan clearly inside the loaf. I’m really happy with how they’ve turned out.

Village Bakery Stollen Recipe

For four loaves (everyone loves you if you are making stollen):

Ferment: warm milk 220g
fresh yeast 10g
sugar 10g
flour 80g
mix and allow to stand till it collapses (took 1¼ hours at 19C)

Dough: all the ferment
flour 446g (VB quantity = 380g)
salt 4g
brown sugar 40g
egg 100g (two medium eggs)
rum 20g
butter 200g
sultanas 200g
raisins 160g
mixed peel 140g

(VB recipe doesn’t add the fruit until after the first rise) The way I do it is put the flour, salt, sugar and butter in a food processor and pulse till the butter is incorporated. Then put this and remaining ingredients in the mixer and mix at 2 briefly (after a couple of minutes it turns to sludge).

Let rise for 1½ hours.

Marzipan: ground almonds 140g
caster sugar 40g
icing sugar 25g
egg 50g (1 medium)

I just used 65g caster sugar. Throw ingredients in processor.

Divide dough and marzipan into four. Press and stretch each piece of dough out to a rectangle approx twice as long as wide. You are supposed to roll out the marzipan to a similar but slightly smaller rectangle and place it on top of the dough but my marzipan is always too sticky and I end up gently spreading it on top of the dough. Roll the dough up into a log with the join underneath. Place on a baking sheet and brush with egg wash. Let rise for about ¾ hour.

Bake at Gas 7 for about ¾ hour. Brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with icing sugar when cold.

On my big bake I make 16 stollen – see http://uk.photos.yahoo.com/bethesdabakers – I wrapped them in cling film when they were cold, then bubble wrap, packed them in cardboard mailers and sent the to chums around the country. They all arrived intact and were fine to eat at least three weeks after baking.

That’s your next year’s Christmas presents sorted out for you.