by Lady Clara Huttmacher (Shire of Roxbury Mill)

The history of stollen is wrapped up in both the (Roman Catholic) church and the Duchy of Saxony.
“Dresden Stollen” as we know it today is said to have originated in 1329 as a result of a contest offered by the Bishop of Naumburg (an 11th Century castle and a cathedral at the crossing of two trade-routes) challenging the bakers to make a new recipe with butter.¹ The recipe I chose has 6 ounces (1-1/2 sticks) of butter in the dough and another 4 ounces of butter (1 stick) poured over the pair of loaves.

Sadly by the 15th century, the church forbid cooking with butter during Advent (the weeks leading up to
Christmas). The Church Council supervised the preparation of stollen without butter for the Saxon Royal Court in 1427–flour, yeast, oil and water—a sad substitute for what stollen would be in future years.

”In 1450 (Holy Roman Empire) Elector Ernst of Saxony and his brother Albrecht applied to the Pope
Nikolaus V. for an abrogation of the butter-prohibition. The Vatican bureaucracy was a hard test of Saxon bakers’ patience. Five popes must die, before Pope Innocenz VIII sent a letter in 1491, known as “butter-
letter”, to Dresden. In that letter he had declared that richer ingredients were allowed. In return, the Dresden Stollen bakers had to pay a “fine” (a.k.a. a bribe) to be used for building of churches.”²

I decided to try baking stollen after watching a Great British Bake Off holiday episode where the bakers made stollen. I previously baked “Bethmannchen” marzipan cookies for the fall 2019 coronation of King Cuan and Queen Signy and in recognition of my German persona. As a result, I was fascinated with making another German dessert involving marzipan and I made my first loaves for the shire’s December 2019 potluck where members were encouraged to bring their favorite holiday food to share. I received multiple compliments and encouragement to enter the enter the stollen competition at Kingdom 12th Night in January 2020.

I used the recipe from Daring Gourmet including making my own candied citrus peel and marzipan.³

Significance of Ingredients
Although the modern recipe called for rum, I substituted brandy for authenticity.

“The first remains of the earliest lemon, found in the Roman Forum, date to right around the time of Jesus
Christ, the end of the first century BC and early first century AD,” said Dr. Langgut. “It appears that the
citron was considered a valuable commodity due to its healing qualities, symbolic use, pleasant odor and rarity. Only the rich could have afforded it. Its spread therefore was helped more by its high social status, its significance in religion and its unique features, rather than its culinary qualities.” ⁴

According to Dr. Langgut, sour oranges, limes and pomelos were introduced to the West by Muslim traders via Sicily and the Iberian Peninsula much later, in the 10th century AD. “It is clear that Muslim traders played a crucial role in the dispersal of cultivated citrus in Northern Africa and Southern Europe,” Dr. Langgut said. “It’s also evident because the common names of many of the citrus types were derived from Arabic, following an earlier diversification in Southeast Asia. Muslims controlled extensive territory and commerce routes from India to the Mediterranean.”

According to the research, the sweet orange associated with Israel today only dates as far back as the 15th century and was the product of a trade route established by the Genoese and, later, the Portuguese. The sticky-sweet mandarin was introduced to the Mediterranean only in the beginning of the 19th century.

“It wasn’t until the 15th century that the sweet orange arrived on European tables. By the time mandarins
appeared in the 19th century, citrus fruits were considered commonplace,” said Dr. Lanngut. “They were cash crops rather than luxury items.”

“Fruits known by the Romans were again found in the Middle Ages and at the Renaissance. To those, coming from the Arabic countries, were added lemon (citrus limonicum) and bitter orange (citrus aurantium). Bitter orange is a citrus fruit close to the orange, but very bitter and it must be cooked or candied to be good tasting. The sweet orange (citrus sinencis), that we know of today, appeared only in the 15th century, and it was not found in cookery before the 16th century.

The use of almonds, or almond milk, was developed in all countries and throughout Medieval cookery. The oily nut of these fruits was mostly used as extra liaison for sauces (complementary to bread) or as a substitute for butter or milk on fast days. Almonds were just as well found with meat dishes as with fish preparations. They were also, in the Middle Ages, part of those products which were both food and medicine. As such, doctors could prescribe them. This was also the case for sugar, spices, and hippocras (spiced wine). Thus are almonds and sugar found in the composition of preparations for the sick: 10 recipes for the sick by Maître Chiquart out of 16 contain almonds.

Banquets were often ended, in the Middle Ages or Renaissance, by the boute-hors (out drive): the meal was finished, the table cleared, and wine and chamber spices were served in another room. The chamber spices were sweets made of spices or fruit, candied in sugar or honey. Ginger can be preserved (gingibrat) as well as coriander or aniseed. Fruit were candied as in the menus of Messisbugo and Scappi: melons, lemons or oranges, quinces, pomegranates, chestnuts … Nuts (pine nuts, almonds, walnuts), they were also candied, else made into more elaborate confectionery, some ancestor sort of nougat: pignolat in France, pinyonada or torron in Catalonia, torrone or copeta in Italy. These candied fruits, as the hippocras people drank at the end of the meal, were supposed to close up the stomach and make digestion easier.”⁵

Stollen recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup lukewarm whole milk
• 3 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 large egg
• 2 large egg yolks
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks) , at room temperature so it’s very soft
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• zest of one lemon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 3/4 teaspoon ground mace
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 8 ounces homemade marzipan
• 9 ounces raisins
• 3 ounces candied lime peel
• 3 ounces candied orange peel
• 3 ounces slivered almonds, chopped
• 1/3 cup brandy
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted
• powdered sugar for generous dusting

1. Prepare marzipan and candied citrus peel at least 1 week in advance to allow time for drying and
   flavor melding.
2. Place the raisins, candied citrus peel and almonds in a medium bowl and pour the brandy over it. Stir to
   combine. Set aside and let the fruit mixture soak in the brandy while the dough rises.
3. Stir the yeast and 2 tablespoons of the sugar into the lukewarm milk and let sit in a warm place for
   10-15 minutes until very frothy.
4. Place the flour, remaining sugar, egg, egg yolks, butter, vanilla extract, lemon zest, salt, cardamom,
   mace and cinnamon in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Add the yeast/milk
   mixture. Use a spoon to stir the mixture until it comes together. Knead the dough on the bread
   setting for 7-8 minutes. Remove the dough ball, lightly spray the bowl with a little oil, return the
   dough ball, cover loosely with plastic wrap and place it in a warm place or lightly warmed oven (just
   barely warm), to rise until nearly doubled in size, at least 1 hour.
5. Punch down the dough and add the soaked fruit/nut mixture to the dough (it should have
   absorbed all the rum by now but if there is excess liquid, pour it out before adding the mixture to
   the dough). Using the dough hook, knead the fruit/nut mixture into the dough until combined. If
   the dough is too wet to handle, add a little bit of flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of
   the bowl.
6. Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and cut it in two equal halves. Press or roll each
   piece into an oval to about 1-inch thickness. Roll each piece of marzipan into a log the length of the
   oval. Press the marzipan gently into the middle of the dough. Fold the left side of the dough over
   to cover the marzipan, then fold right side over on top of the left side so that the edge of it sits just
   left of the middle of the stollen. Pinch and tuck the top and bottom ends of the stollen to cover the
   marzipan. Use the bottom edge of your hand to press down along the length of the stollen towards
   the right of the center to create a divot and characteristic hump.
7. Place the stollen on a lined baking sheet. Cover the stollen loosely with plastic wrap and let them
   rest in a warm place or lightly warmed oven for 40-60 minutes until puffy.
8. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and bake the stollen for 30-40 minutes or until golden. Let the
   Stollen sit for 5 minutes, then use a toothpick to poke holes all over the stollen (this will allow the
   butter to seep in), then generously brush the stollen with the melted butter while the stollen are still
   warm. Immediately sprinkle with a generous amount of powdered sugar, rubbing it into the creases
   and down the sides. Let the stollen cool completely. You may want to give it another dusting of
   powdered sugar once cooled.

1. https://www.dresdenstollen.com/history/stollen_history.asp ↩︎
2. https://www.stollen-online.de/dresdnerstollen/geschichte-eng.htm ↩︎
3. https://www.daringgourmet.com/stollen-german-christmas-bread/ ↩︎
4. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170818092100.htm (The Citrus Route Revealed: From
   Southeast Asia into the Mediterranean) ↩︎
5. https://www.oldcook.com/en/medieval-fruit ↩︎