Baked in Holland - name that sweetbread!!

December 5, 2006 1:21 PM

Help me find the name of a Dutch sweetbread (containing small bits of dried fruit and nuts) with entire "candied" banana baked inside. a special stollen?

About a year ago we were in the Netherlands and stopped in at an Albert Hein to get groceries. There in the bakery was a huge thick loaf of a sweetbread the size of an NFL football that weighed a ton. After throwing it around a bit to impress each other with the sheer mass of this thing, we bought it on a lark.

To our delight it was one of the most delicious dessert breads we'd ever tasted. Similar to a stollen but it had an entire banana saturated with sugar baked into the center of it. Please hope me to track this thing's origins down! Was it something specifically made in the Albert Hein bakery and no place else?

posted by ernie to food & drink (9 comments total)

The filling probably wasn't candied banana but spijs; some form of almond paste similar to marzipan but more coarse. The bread probably was Albert Heijns variation on the theme of krentenbrood.
posted by jouke at 2:05 PM on December 5, 2006 [1 favorite]

My goodness jouke I think you might be right. The vein of it buried in the bread did seem banana shaped but my baker friend seems to think that wouldn't bake well. Almonds may be the answer here, no bananas.
posted by ernie at 2:19 PM on December 5, 2006

Following through the links -

Almendelspijs: Grind them, grind them again together with the lemon rasp, sugar, egg, and vanilla. Roll it in a long "sausage" form.

The mystery is solved! It looks like it was Krentenbrood given the sausage shaped Almendelspijs treatment.
posted by ernie at 2:28 PM on December 5, 2006

According to my husband, a Dutch native, what you ate was kerststol, a kind of sweet bread they have available at both Christmas and Easter. He calls is "kerststol " at Christmas, and "paastol" at Easter. And yes, it is almond paste. And yes, it is delicious. This is a recipe I found that looks close, though I am sure you can buy this somewhere in a major metro area during the holidays. Soooo good.
posted by theantikitty at 2:38 PM on December 5, 2006

PS: He says the main difference between Krentenbrood and the other words I mentioned is that Krentenbrood rarely has the marzipan filling, and the others always do.
posted by theantikitty at 2:41 PM on December 5, 2006

Cool! Well this thing most definitely had the filling.
posted by ernie at 2:44 PM on December 5, 2006

BTW theantikitty - that was the same link as jouke!
posted by ernie at 2:45 PM on December 5, 2006

Since the question has been answered, perhaps you'll pardon my noting that your use of the word "sweetbread" is, ah, not standard. I think "sweet bread" would have been more apt.
posted by bricoleur at 2:56 PM on December 5, 2006

*sees "sweetbread" link* - YECH!

I'll but a space between those words from now on, thanks!
posted by ernie at 3:02 PM on December 5, 2006