BBA Challenge #36: Stollen

It now seems like a lifetime ago.

I used to live in Brooklyn. Why there, and not Manhattan? The simplest and foremost reason was the sky. I grew up in California where you have nothing but sky. The highest buildings in my area were about two-stories high, and even then, they were a rarity. So Brooklyn was an obvious choice. Most buildings weren't over four stories and the sky- oh, the sky.

Much to my chagrin, though, most people I knew who lived in Manhattan would very rarely come to Brooklyn. When I would throw parties, they would sort of look at me funny like "You expect me to go where?" and then confess that they had been to Brooklyn only once or twice. Me, on the other hand, I preferred to stay in Brooklyn, and would try, as much as I could, to spend time all my there. My favorite bars were in Brooklyn and I just loved the way it looked. Though I have to confess that I did do most of my food shopping at the Union Square Farmer's Market and Whole Foods in Union Square. Chalk it up to convenience.

Still, I was always on the lookout for shops to visit, and without the infrastructure of Twitter and food blogs- which I never knew existed until I found The Smitten Kitchen- I had to pretty much hear of them through word-of-mouth or random walking.

I don't remember how I discovered Schaller und Weber on the Upper East Side. Perhaps I was visiting my only friend that lived up there, or maybe I just stumbled up on it on the crazy mammoth walks I would undertake just to look at the different architecture. I once walked about 12 miles through three boroughs, just for fun. My favorite thing to do while visiting said friend was to pop into Schaller und Weber and just inhale the smell of the sausages. I know, I know, being a vegetarian and all, what was I thinking? But I just loved the way the place smelled, all meaty and salty and cured.

The thing I most remember about the store was looking at the strange products in German, before I could read and write it. Mustards and Tomato Paste in tubes, strange boxes full of potato powder ready to be made into Kartoffelklöße. Well, the same things that you can get in any good supermarket here.

One cold January morning, I picked up something heavy. It was Stollen, and a kilo of it, at that, all wrapped in a plastic bag with a best by date of March. I don't remember where I had heard of Stollen before, but I seemed to have seen it somewhere before. I picked it up, put it in the basket along with various mustards and German candy.


As part of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge as hosted by the lovely Nicole of Pinch My Salt, stollen would be showing up on the schedule sometime after Christmas, which is a bit funny because most Germans avoid Stollen anyhow, so I thought I'd have a tough time trying to get rid of it.

Here's the mise en place. Just in case you're wondering, I did the same as with the Panettone and soaked the candied fruit in some Macallan single malt Scotch. It was amazing in that, so I decided to do it again.


Once again, the Electrolux Assistent comes to the rescue. I wish I could make a video of how it works just to show people how amazing this thing really is.


Here's the mixture with the almonds and the fruit included.


And as a ball together. The dough was pretty wet on this one for some reason. Perhaps I didn't mix it enough before I added the rest of the bits.


After the first rise, it's not as pillowy as the Panettone, but it's still on this side of firm.


I rolled it out into a rough rectangle. Rough here being a very key word.


Sprinkled the almonds. Actually, I wanted to spread some marzipan in the middle just like the Marzipan Stollen you get here.


I folded it over and...


Um. No, wait. I folded it over and folded the other part over. Somehow I got really confused with the shaping, wanting to make it like the ones here. The funny thing is that many recipes I've found here call for a Stollen pan in order to make that perfect Stollen.


I did no such thing, but thought it came out pretty good.


I sort of winged it with the almonds and just stuffed them into the "mouth" of the Stollen.

Now, you might ask when exactly I made the Stollen. Well, it was three months ago in March. Some friends had been trying to pin us down for the Christmas get-together we never had, and, well, Stollen had been the next bread in the book so it all worked perfectly to plan.


Or, it would have. Somehow in my haste and in trying to get ready to leave the house I sort of... burnt it. Not wanting to trash it and not wanting to re-do the Stollen, I decided to do something I thought I'd never do.


Once we got to the party, I decided to cut off the bad parts of the Stollen and move forward.


I decorated it with powdered sugar and brought it out. The thing is that the Stollen was so delicious, I couldn't help but shave off slices. Among the four of us, we polished off half of the thing. I cut half of what remained and left it there.


One of the things you can do with Stollen is to leave it out for weeks to dry it out. Unfortunately for this one. It didn't even last another day. It was that good.

Just for comparison, though. I'm very much used to Stollen that is pretty dry. When the first ones start appearing in early October, I usually buy a mini-Stollen- for the sake of research, of course. They're pretty dry, but not dry enough that a glass of milk can't make it better. As the season progresses, I get to sample all kinds of Stollen. But once Christmas is over, it's gone. As though they know they won't be able to move the loaves of sugary coated goodness once the holiday season is over.

Most people I know here hate Stollen. I have no idea why. Though, if you look at the Christmas Bread situation in the States it's no better: Fruitcake. We once received one and it was awful. All candied fruit and dense. I vowed never to touch it again. But something dawned on me when eating a similar and very small loaf of fruit bread here. Fruitcake, the kind you get in the US would be so much better swimming in some kind of scotch or rum. I can just imagine it now.

Other Stollen Bakers include:

Phyl from Of Cabbages and King Cakes

Sally from Bewitching Kitchen

ap269 from Family and Food

Oggi from I can do that!

BBA Challenge #27: Portuguese Sweet Bread

I never experienced "Hawaiian Bread" growing up. For us it was either the store-brand loaf of soft white bread, or it was the long family-size loaf of brownish bread. Every now and then, however, my father would buy a loaf of wheat bread with a split down the top which promised to have been brushed with butter. Though I always bit off that part of the bread first, it never really fulfilled its promise. The thing I hated the most as a child was that my father had a passion for Pineapple-Apricot Preserves, and while I don't remember explicitly detesting it as a child, I was always happy when he brought home Strawberry Preserves.

Nowadays, I don't eat much jam, and when I do, I prefer the Belgian fruit syrups on a slice of anything toasted. The crunch of a good slice of bread followed by the intense sweetness of 700% fruit just cannot be matched for me. I know this is a bit sacrilicious, but I'm one of those few people who rarely butter bread. I usually do it out of boredom or if the bread is so bad that I need to do something to it. Plus, there is this weird habit of buttering sandwiches here that I just cannot get used to. When I spread mustard on bread people nearly gasp in horror. And when I spread fig jam on the opposite slice of bread- well, you would think I was going against nature!


That all having come out, though, it distracted me from the Hawaiian bread, also known as Portuguese Sweet Bread. The first picture, above, is of this weird sponge made with water, flour, sugar, and yeast. I actually had a false start with one sponge, not because it didn't work, but because I had no extracts. I had to toss it before trying again this time.

Above, as always, the mise en place, with the vanilla extract separating out and sinking away from the oily citrus extracts.


One thing that I am always amazed of is how dough just comes together after a bit of mixing. Of course it always comes together faster in the machine, even when I put it on the lowest setting.


The other thing I love is the way dough looks when it has developed. Not that it actually pulsates, but it has this life to it. The kind of way it feels almost solid but still soft. Warm and inviting. You just want to curl up atop it.


My friend K. brought these pie plates back during a trip to the lovely country of Canada. I do wish they were not non-stick because they will inevitably get scratched from heavy pie eating, but they're from Chicago Metallic, so I really can't argue with that.


The dough is formed into a ball and placed in the precise center of the pie plate. I didn't measure, but I do have a good eye for these things.


Even before I began this recipe, I knew it wouldn't fill the pan. Other bloggers who baked before me confirmed this. I did have my fingers crossed, or, as they say here, my thumbs pressed- but, alas, it was the same.


What came out of the oven was something I was not at all expecting. Two, count them, two loaves of the most beautiful mahogany brown. When I pulled them out, I remember thinking that they looked like pillows made out of wood.


Even the bottoms were perfectly browned.


Plus they were as shiny as can be. I really can't remember the last time I did an egg wash- mostly hearth breads take up my time, and then they're usually covered with a dusting of flour.


The weirdest thing, though, was that they were not soft at all. Perhaps because my oven heats primarily from the top, the crust got a bit too dry. I'll have to bake them at a lower temperature or for a few minutes less. Or maybe just stick them in plastic bags for a few days to soften up.

The interior, however, was very moist. And toasted, the bread was just heavenly. It reminded me of my time in Providence, RI and the bread we would buy there. The Portuguese Sweet Bread was always a mystery to me, partly because it had this funny shape that is explained by the pie plate. Those breads always filled the pie plate, and thus, weren't really properly boule-shaped, but more like boule-in-a-pie-plate-shaped.

Because this was one of the last breads of 2009, I can't remember much about it! Too much time has passed. i know that we gave one of the loaves away- yes, we are a small household of two, so bread is always being given away.

Other Sweet Portuguese Bakers include:

Cindy from Salt and Serenity

Kelly from Something Shiny

Chris from Eating Is The Hard Part

Angela from Gourmet Hotdish Disasters

txfarmer's blog (in chinese, but with lots of pictures)