- Janny de Moor - https://www.jannydemoor.nl/en -

Christmas stollen

Ingredients

Baking material:

 

Almond paste :

 

Dough:

 

Filling:

 

On top:

They are of German origin, the loaves that you will see in every Dutch supermarket in December. Saxon Christmas stollen are already mentioned in 1329. Bishop Heinrich I von Grünberg bestowed the baker’s guild of his city all kinds of rights on condition that they would deliver him and his successors every year at Christmas Stollen. In Dresden in the seventeenth century, stollen was offered annually to the Elector of Saxony on Boxing Day. These stollen were 1½ meters long, weighed 36 pounds and were cut into 36 pieces for distribution. Hence the word Stolle, which means “clog, lump”. It was originally a piece of a what is called krintenwegge in the Nether Saxon Dutch dialect, a gift when a child was born. Wegge-  or Wiegebrood (cradle bread)  was the old Dutch name.

The Dresden Christmas stollen became so famous that they conquered the whole world. Soon the bakers in Dresden decided to bake them in a somewhat more convenient format so that they could be sent everywhere. It is thought that the surface of the Dresdner Weihnachtstolle covered with glaze is intended as a reminder of the Christ Child wound in cloth.

Here my own homely recipe that got better and better over the years.