Stollen: How-to

December 1, 2022 11:58 AM

I want to bake stollen. I have baked yeasted bread before, just nothing like this. The recipe I have has a step that goes "work butter and remaining flour together; knead into risen dough." I have no idea of the correct way to do this step.

I have included the entire recipe below. Is the "worked" butter supposed to be room temperature? Does one beat the flour into it or do it by hand? How does one work this mixture into already-risen dough without making a mess or creating a rock-hard inedible lump? Previous experience with guessing at instructions I don't understand leads me to not to try and attempt this without SOME clarification. Also, any general tips for baking stollen would be welcome. Thanks.

The recipe is

Scant 2 cups warm milk
1 cup sugar
3 packages active dry yeast
8 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
2 cups raisins
1 cup chopped almonds
2/3 cup chopped candied lemon peel
1/3 cup chopped candied orange peel
2 tablespoons rum
1 cup butter

Topping
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter
1 cup powdered sugar

To make yeast dough, put warm milk into a medium bowl; stir in 1 tablespoon sugar. Sprinkle with yeast; let stand 5 minutes or until the surface is frothy. Stir gently to moisten any particles remaining on top. Sift 6 2/3 cups flour, salt and remaining sugar into a large bowl. Lightly beat eggs into yeast mixture with vanilla and lemon peel. Pour into flour mixture, combining to make a firm dough. On a floured surface, knead dough until smooth. Cover and let rise in a warm place 1 hour. Mix raisins, almond and candied peel in a medium bowl; sprinkle with rum. Cover and let steep.

Work butter and remaining flour together; knead into risen dough. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 15 minutes. Line baking sheets with waxed paper; grease paper.

Divide dough into 3 portions. On a floured surface, gently roll each piece into a 12 inch long oval which is thinner in the middle than at the edges. Fold dough over lengthwise, making a 6 inch length. This gives the typical stollen shape. Place dough on baking sheet. Repeat with remaining 2 pieces of dough. Cover and let stand in a warm place for 20 minutes until increased in size. Preheat oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake stollen 30 to 35 minutes or untila rich golden brown.

To make topping, melt butter. Brush melted butter over hot stollen. Sift powered sugar generously over stollen.

posted by Crystal Fox to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

I'm very confused by that recipe, seeing as how it's missing a filling like marzipan (I've never had Stollen without it) and the raisins, almonds, and candied peel are never actually incorporated into the dough. This King Arthur guide includes the filling (including alternate filling ideas), tells you when to incorporate the fruit mixture, and includes lots of pictures of the whole process. It might be helpful for you as you figure out the recipe you have (or maybe instead of the recipe you have).
posted by fedward at 12:28 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

This seems like a somewhat strange recipe. I've baked a lot of stollen and other similar breads (stollen is basically a brioche dough on the dry side) but never one that wanted an hour of rising before mixing in the butter nor one that wanted butter mixed with flour.

If you're going to follow this recipe, I would recommend starting with room temperature butter and mixing the flour in by hand with a wooden spoon or slowly in a stand mixer (you don't want to cream the butter, just mix it with the flour). Then you can knead this into the dough by hand or again slowly in a stand mixer. If you're doing it by hand, you need a somewhat vigorous technique to get the butter fully mixed in, but you want to avoid melting the butter with your hands. A slapping kneading motion, where you smack the dough onto your counter or board and then stretch it out, can work well.

The proofing time also seems quite short in this recipe, especially after mixing in the butter. I wouldn't hesitate to wait a little longer if it hasn't risen much.

If you want to try a different recipe, Peter Reinhart's version has worked well for me and many others.
posted by ssg at 12:30 PM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Agreed this seems like an odd recipe. It almost seems like they're having you knead a rough-pull-pastry-type dough--or like, half of one--into your regular stollen dough? Maybe to increase flakiness (though I'm not clear at all that that would work...)? In that case you could use a fork or pastry cutter to cut the butter into the flour.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:50 PM on December 1, 2022

The way it's written, I would combine the butter and flour as if I were making beurre manié, and then follow ssg's instruction on the kneading motion to incorporate it in the dough.
posted by jocelmeow at 3:17 PM on December 1, 2022

The butter/flour technique I’ve seen used with sesame oil for scallion pancakes. It’s just a lamination technique that helps keep the layers separate without all the ginger handling of puff pastry. You don’t want to like knead knead the dough though, I would roll it out and spread the butter mixture over then give it a few turns. Room temperature is what you want so it is soft enough to spread.
posted by goingonit at 7:26 PM on December 1, 2022

Exciting that it is Stollen season! Kneading high fat bread by hand can be a bit tricky if you aren't experienced at kneading, and this weird step looks to me kind of like an (unusual) workaround for that, making the actual kneading step much more straightforward and completely removing the impact of the butter on gluten development. I've never seen this particular approach, but if you google around for "hand knead brioche" you'll find different approaches that do something approximately like this with the butter, but earlier, e.g. this one, or fraisage (+ a slap and fold thing). I've been searching around while writing this and still haven't found someone actively discussing a post-rise technique, but one of the answers here is someone who did it by accident, and it doesn't sound terrible.

Though as someone who has made a lot of bread (including Stollen with similar or higher fat ratios, both the king arthur one already linked and this one), I would probably ignore all this and just incorporate it all at once before kneading (especially if using a stand mixer). It's doable by hand and fairly standard for this bread. (Having a dough scraper is very helpful for manipulating dough that is this rich by hand, if you have some tool like this dig it out.)

Also, yeah, the recipe you pasted is missing a step of incorporating the fruit, it should happen right after the butter (I googled some exact phrases and found a few versions of this recipe online that did have this step (possibly this is the origin).

General tip: I personally think that by far the most important thing for good Stollen is to candy your own peel, which is very easy to do. Other tip: despite what you're supposed to do, Stollen is *delicious* when freshly made, so always make multiple loaves, some to eat right away and some to age.
posted by advil at 7:40 PM on December 1, 2022 [2 favorites]

I have a number of different stollen recipes. None of them call for the baffling step you have highlighted, reserving all of the butter and some flour to be incorporated later. Most of them call for melting all of the butter in the milk before incorporating with the flour. However, one recipe reserves 3TBLSP to use after the dough has risen and been punched down. Once the loaf portions are shaped into disks, a flap is folded over to create the signature stollen shape, and the extra butter is spread inside the flap.

I think advil has good advice, and I heartily concur about making your own candied orange peel. What I don't see in your recipe is cardamom, which for me, is the whole point of making stollen! It's not Christmas until the house is filled with the cardamom aroma. If you do go ahead with this recipe, I would love to hear how it comes out.
posted by amusebuche at 3:03 AM on December 2, 2022

My guess is that the writer of the recipe found that if you add the butter before the kneadind and rising steps, the dough is greasy and/or sticky and unpleasant to work with. So they did the gluten-creating steps first, then added the butter. It probably doesn't make much difference to the final product.

To me, the rising times seem on the short side, but that's in contrast to the recipe I use that calls for letting the dough sit in th refrigerator for a few hours.
posted by SemiSalt at 5:38 AM on December 2, 2022