The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge the Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.
The original recipe called for lots of candied citrus peels and rum. Personally, I’m not really a rum person, and I didn’t feel like candying that much peel. I was feeling particularly lazy this Christmas. However I couldn’t be too lazy because this stollen has quite a few steps. I recommend getting a partner to help you with this recipe. This will help you make sure everything that needs to be added to the bread, actually is added to the bread. Also, you’ll have four different bowls of ingredients that need to be prepared before they are all combined.
We had a great time making this dessert. The best part of it was watching the bread grow. After we formed it into the wreath we watched it grow and grow (it’s alive!), then once it went into the oven it got even bigger. We decided to bring the monster to our family gathering on Christmas eve. After a little explanation the dessert started to disappear (it goes well with pizza and buffalo wings!). At the end of the evening there was some fighting over the remaining stollen, mostly because I suggested it would make an amazing French toast tomorrow morning.
Plan ahead and spend some time with someone special, baking this dessert. You’ll be enjoying it for days ahead. Make it into French toast, a bread pudding or just as toast with butter. If you coat it with sticks and sticks of butter and layers and layers of powdered sugar, then this dessert will last for weeks. (And also be buttery and delicious, BUTTER!)