Stollen is a rich, stodgy, fruit bread, laced with spices and marzipan, traditionally baked at Christmas-time in Germany. This version is very loosely adapted from a Bake Off recipe, but with significantly less caster sugar and uses extra virgin olive oil instead of butter.
Ingredients:
(Makes 2 Stollen)
- Dried instant yeast – 1½ teaspoons
- Caster sugar – 1½ teaspoons
- Plain flour – 200g
- Strong malted flour – 300g
- Salt – 1 teaspoon
- Extra virgin olive oil – 75g
- Milk (any sort) – 300mls
- Currants – 100g
- Raisins – 100g
- Dried cranberries – 50g
- Dried apricots – 50g
- Ground all spice – ¼ teaspoon
- Cinnamon – ¼ teaspoon
- Nutmeg – ¼ teaspoon
- Ground star anise – 1 pinch
- Ground cloves – 1 pinch
- Ground green cardamom pod seeds – 1 pinch
- Marzipan – 200g
- Icing sugar – 2 teaspoons
Instructions:
- Place the yeast, sugar, flour, salt, olive oil and milk together in a large bowl
- Mix and knead for about 5 minutes
- Now mix the dried fruit and spices together in a large bowl and then add the dough
- Continue to mix and knead until the fruit and spices are integrated and the dough is nice and supple
- Cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1-2 hours, until the dough has roughly doubled in size
- Then take your dough and divide into two equal portions
- Take one portion and roll it out into a rectangular shape approximately 20cm x 40cm
- Now take the half the marzipan (100g), and roll this out as well, so that it is also rectangular but slightly shorter; about 20cm x 35cm
- Place the rolled out marzipan on top of the rolled out dough, matching the 20cm sides
- Now roll up the dough/marzipan mix in the direction of the longest side to make a fairly compact log
- Repeat steps 7-10 with the remaining dough and marzipan
- Place the logs on a baking tray, cover and allow to rise in a warm area for another 45-60 mins
- Preheat your oven to 160°C
- Bake the stollen logs in the oven for approximately 1 hour (check they don’t burn)
- Once cooked, remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool
- When the stollen is cool, brush the top and sides with olive oil and dust with icing sugar
- Leave until completely cool before cutting and eating