Hope you enjoy every moment of the baking and eating Sue :))

Thanks so much for replying. I’m glad it won’t keep that long. I can’t see us being able to hold off eating it for two weeks or more!

Hello Sue,
Great to get your comment and thank you first of all for your kind words.

There are different types of Stollen. The (German) ones that have more filling than bread, with lots of candied fruit and dried fruits steeped in rum, nuts and marzipan are wrapped tightly and stored to ‘ripen’. This allows the liquid from the rum-soaked dried fruits to soak into the bread creating both flavor and moistness. The alcohol and high sugar content are very probably also the reason it keeps well.

The ratio bread and filling is different for our own stollen recipe and, as we state in the recipe, you can also choose to soak the fruit in rum or other alcoholic substance, but it is also perfect without.

Our stollen can also be kept for at least several days, well wrapped in a bag or container and it will still be good.
But it is more a bread with filling than ‘filling with bread’ and it does not really benefit from ‘ripening’ so we would recommend to eat it fresh or within 2 to 5 days and otherwise store it in the freezer until you want to serve it.

Hope this gives you an idea. Otherwise, ask away 🙂

Best wishes and Happy Holiday Baking!

Marieke

Lovely to see you back, by the way. I’ve been using your recipes but so nice to see you commenting again. Really missed you. This is the best baking website ever! Best wishes for the festive season and 2025.

Hello Gerard,
We also make smaller stollen / mini stollen by dividing the dough into 4 equal pieces. The baking time lies around 20 minutes depending on your oven. We bake for around ten minutes at 190 Celsius and then temper the oven to 160 for the remaining time. You need to learn by doing a few rounds what works best for you, but 20 minutes is a very good starting point and will be close to the ‘sweet spot’.
Hope you will enjoy making and eating the stollen!

Hello Nicole,
We would advice to make notes of what went well and what to adjust next time. To get to that fluffy stage, you really need to make sure the dough is well risen when you take the stollen to the oven. A warm draft free place is what you need to create. Years ago I made a very good stollen by letting it proof on the floor with underfloor heating. I did not have anything else at the moment I could use at that time, because the oven was already in use. But a slightly preheated oven (then turned off of course) that has a nice warm ‘climate’ is a very good place for proofing.
Hope you will make it again and it will only get better as you make it your own!

Have a wonderful 2024

Here is the conversion for you:

250 g all purpose flour (we use French type 55) / 2 cups

135 g lukewarm milk* / 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon

7 g instant yeast or 21 g fresh yeast / 2 teaspoons plus 1/4 teaspoon instant or 3 x that amount fresh yeast

5.5 g salt / approx 1 teaspoon

1 egg yolk

40 g butter, softened / 2 tablespoons plus 2 (heaped) teaspoons

15 g ‘sweetener'(orange and lemon zest sugar) / 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon

180 g dried fruits equal parts, raisins, currants, cranberries, soaked and dried / this is hard to convert ‘guestimate 2 cups

150 g almond paste combined with 1/2 a small egg or one egg yolk / 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons

Hope this helps you.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday baking!

Sorry, Dorcas, we do not have much experience with gluten free baking. So we hope you can give it a try anyway and let us know how it goes.

Hope it will be a success and delicious too!

We would advice to not refrigerate the stollen as bread will go stale the quickest in the fridge. Store it in a bag in an airtight container in your kitchen or if it takes more than 5 days before you eat it, freeze the bread and take it out an hour minimum before use to thaw.

Merry Christmas

Here is the conversion for you:

250 g all purpose flour (we use French type 55) / 2 cups

135 g lukewarm milk* / 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon

7 g instant yeast or 21 g fresh yeast / 2 teaspoons plus 1/4 teaspoon instant or 3 x that amount fresh yeast

5.5 g salt / approx 1 teaspoon

1 egg yolk

40 g butter, softened / 2 tablespoons plus 2 (heaped) teaspoons

15 g ‘sweetener'(orange and lemon zest sugar) / 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon

180 g dried fruits equal parts, raisins, currants, cranberries, soaked and dried / this is hard to convert ‘guestimate 2 cups

150 g almond paste combined with 1/2 a small egg or one egg yolk / 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons

Hope this helps you.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday baking!

The stollen is placed on an oven tray lined with some grease proof baking paper or a baking sheet.

Enjoy your stollen baking!

Thank you 🙂
Comma added.