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 #25: Pizza! Napoletana

When I was in College, or, as I am now accustomed to say, in University, I worked at one of the University-run snack bars. I worked Friday Nights because I really had no social life, and working allowed me to talk to random strangers while their food was cooking. While I enjoyed working the grill and making omelettes for very cute women, my true love was making pizzas. The only drawback was that I actually didn't get to talk to anyone except for whoever was making pizzas along with me. So I had to switch every other week in order to get the best of both positions.

The thing here, though was that we had copious amounts of cornmeal to dust the peels, so they slid beautifully into the oven. Taking them out, however, was a different matter. There was always this fear that the pizza would wobble on the peel, and fall to the floor, cheese side down, of course. I did drop a few, but, in truth, perhaps only two out of the hundred or so that I made in my time there.

Growing up, however, we never made pizza at home. Our home oven was actually unused for most of the time I was growing up, and, since Mexican cuisine doesn't really have much that requires an oven, it became the de facto storage for our pots and pans. As for delivery, we had the Pizza Cart, always a phone call away, and Domino's, which I hated because it never tasted good and the pizzas were always way too small in comparison with those from the Pizza Cart.

In New York, there was always the debate as to who had the best pizza, and which Ray's was the first with the name. For best pie, however, my vote went to Grimaldi's, partly because it was delicious, and partly because it was a bit of a ritual, whenever it happened. We would begin by walking across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan to work up a hunger. Then, we would wait in line outside the restaurant (there was invariably a line) and then scarf down an olive-and-roasted-red-peppers-topped pie. We would head over to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory for a scoop before watching the lights on the Fulton Ferry Landing. Though I've done this countless times, I never got tired of it.

In Berlin, however, Pizza is a different matter. There's mini-pizzas, often available for a single Euro, but they're usually about four or five inches in diameter, or they are a rectangular piece of about the same size. Slices don't exist here except at a few places that claim NY-style pizza, but even their pizza leaves one craving good pizza.

Having said that, there are a few places that make excellent Pizza. Clärchen's Ballhaus, which is actually a ballroom, as well as Toros, near where I work are two good examples. Toros actually has a wood-fired brick oven, which you can see when you walk in. Don't even mention that place in Prenzlauer Berg because I hated the experience of being in the place, though the pizza was pretty good.

My favorite place in Berlin, though, is the Pizza Klub, which, coincidentally, is just a Katzensprung away from us. There had been a string of pizzerias in the same location before they opened up, so when the last one closed my expectations were at Zero. When they removed the paper on the windows after remodeling, however, the entire neighborhood was shocked. There were nice lamps. Wooden tables. Rock star posters on the wall. It looked so... inviting. We first went there on a Sunday after a weekend trip. I really don't remember which pizza I had, but since then, we've had dozens of pies from there. It's even become our favorite place to watch Football, which we do every two years for the European Cup or the World Cup.

I have been making pizza as long as I have been making bread, and while the pizza was always acceptable, it was nowhere near the pizzas I would eat when out.


This is a picture of my Electrolux Assistent model AKM4110W, known to most as the DLX. I actually got it after getting my bonus from work last winter, and after researching it on Jeff Varasano's excellent Pizza Recipe site. My whole intent was to make pizza. I never dreamed I would be participating in the BBA Challenge or getting back to making bread.


For Peter Reinharts recipe, there really isn't much in the way of prep. You sort of chill high-gluten flour as well as water, and just mix it up. I added a little bit of olive oil for texture, but aside from that, there's really nothing to it.


Here's a picture of the dough just before shaping and baking. I have to confess to not reading the directions all the way through. Instead of forming six balls and refrigerating them. I just put the entire dough in a bowl and stuck it in the fridge. I also sort of forgot about it. You see, I had wanted to make pizza during the week, and, as fate always has it, I only got to the dough six days after preparing it. On a Friday. On this day I took the photo above and then froze three of the balls of dough.


The other three were flattened out for a dough rest.


The first pizza was a resounding success! The only thing I didn't like was that I was using a 17% low-fat mozzarella, just to see how the cheese would melt. I've never had much luck with low-fat cheeses, and this one was a bit stubborn as it cooled. I had to wrestle my teeth around it.


It made for a beautiful pie even if the crust was a bit pale.


Pie two also had fresh mozzarella, but this time I used Mozzarella di Bufala, which I traded for an arm but not a leg at Galeries Lafayette.


This was one weirdest things when I first got here. Mozzarella is sold by the Kugel, floating in brine, in its own plastic pouch. In Brooklyn, I used to head to the Italian Market on Graham Avenue and pay a pretty penny for fresh Mozzarella which they would weigh out for me before taking a leg but not an arm. Here, each pouch of 125g Mozzarella can be had for just over fifty Euro cents. The downside to so much fresh, is that the aged variety is impossible to find. Even when you try to buy "Pizza Cheese" here, it is mostly all Gouda, with no Mozzarella at all.


The second pie did not fare well. Hesitation will do the opposite of wonders when you are baking. In this case, I am not sure what happened other than the pie spilled itself onto the oven stone, causing a fair amount of smoke the next day when I was baking my loaf of bread for the week. I flipped the stone over and forgot about the blackened parts.


Pie three gave up a crumb shot. I just had to take it because I can't let a BBA item go by without showing the holes.

Pie four was eaten before I could even get a picture of it. I know, I know. Bad me.


Pie five had parmesan, cheddar and fresh mozzarella. It looked just as toxic as the picture above, but only because I found an cheddar from England that was bright orange, just the way I like it.

This crust was was one of the most flavorful crusts I have ever had, by my hand or otherwise. It really took me back to the Pizza Cart as well as certain pies in New York. Ever since I began seriously appreciating pizza I've been focused on the crust. However, I would never dare eat a pie without tomato sauce. White Pizza? For me, it's not pizza.

Once, my sister and her husband attempted to order Extra Cheese on a thin crust pie at Grimaldi's. Sacrilage! I shouted. I told them to trust me, and just order a maximum of two toppings. The pizza had the right amount of cheese on it. It was just a thin layer, but it was the perfect foil to the crust. After the pizza, we headed over for some ice cream and took in the lights of the city before descending back into the subway and heading home.

Other Pizzaolos in the BBA Challenge:

Kelly from Something Shiny

Janice from Round the Table

Paul from Yumarama

Cindy from Salt and Serenity

Sally from Bewitching Kitchen

BBA Challenge #6: Challah

I made Challah last weekend. Having lived in New York a hundred years ago, I have had good and bad Challah, but strangely enough, never homemade Challah. Unless it was at a restaurant, but even if the restaurant advertised it as homemade Challah, it really is more like "restaurant made".

I do have to note that the Challah at B&H Dairy on Second Avenue in New York was spectacular and really stands out in my head, even though it wasn't braided. But with their veggie lasagna. Oh, man, it really takes me back.

In any case, I made the Challah and prepared the Ciabatta (BBA #7) on the same day.


Here I am weighing the ingredients in two stages. I conveniently forgot about mise en place for this one and sort of winged it to no ill effect. In this pic I am measuring the flour in two bowls for the two stages of adding. There's my trusty old orange Escali Primo, brought over from the States.


Here's all the wet ingredients.


You can see by the order of the photographs that it was all a bit haphazard. One of the great things about living in Germany is the refrigerators. Okay, not really because most people have really small ones. Even for families, it is quite common to have a small fridge. However, if you have a large one, the freezer is always on the bottom. I never understood why it was to that he freezer had to be on the top in the States, particularly as it is opened less frequently than the fridge part.

Here you see the lower-most drawer of the freezer, which is on the bottom. Yeah, I said drawer. On this one we have three drawers and a fourth, smaller one for ice, which we never use. Well, we have trays in there, but the water usually sublimates because we rarely use ice. In this drawer you can see Bagels from BBA Challenge #3, Fermipan instant yeast in the bottom middle, and hops for brewing on the right. In that particular bag, Fuggles and East Kent Goldings.


Salt and yeast. Best of Friends. Für immer.


If people actually asked me, then I could say "People often ask me how the Electrolux DLX works." But, alas, I've not been asked. I often tell people how it works. The wet ingredients go in first, then the dry, and you adjust the dough based on the dry. It is actually very difficult to add in water afterwards, as it does not get mixed in at all.


So you actually have to have a light hand with the flour, as you can easily add too much. My best advice with the machine is to watch the dough the first few times to see how the dough transforms from wet mess to "ball o' dough".


I have to admit here that the recipes often take me longer than what Peter Reinhart writes in the book. I made the Challah on a Friday, and by the time I took this picture, it was pushing 23:00, so I decided to stick it in the fridge and make it the next morning.


Some of the pictures look inconsistent because I had just gotten all the equipment I needed to use my flash. Lightstand, flash bracket, and umbrella, so I was testing the different settings. This one and the one below were taken with daylight.


Here's the boules ready to be formed into ropes. Reminiscent of the bagels.


I decided to make two loaves, as we had planned on giving one away. Unfortunately, I realized only too late that I had made the strands too long, and that the loaves were long and thin instead of fat in the middle like I remember from Brooklyn.


Still, I could not believe I had braided the bread successfully. I have only braided Amy's hair, but it wasn't very long, and I went by intuition.


After 20 minutes I was supposed to turn it 180 degrees to cook, but the loaves were already brown! I made a tent and left them in there for another five minutes before I took the thermometer out and measured their internal temperature. 195 already.


It was dark, but not golden.


This one had a light sprinkle of poppy seeds. I had them left over from, again, the bagels.


And the plain one.


Hardly anyone photographs the underside of the loaves. Perhaps it's not so interesting, but I love the great patterns on the bottom of some of the breads.


And finally, the crumb shot. The bread was light and nice, though not buttery like the brioche. My favorite part was the crust, all dark with the egg wash and overall flavorful. Well, the bread itself had a great flavor, but there was just something about the crust of this Challah.

I made the poolish for the BBA Challenge #7: Ciabatta on the same day as this one, and baked it the day after, so I still have the write up for that one. Today, the day I am blogging about this bread, I made the BBA Challenge #8: Cinnamon Rolls, so I am actually two breads behind.

Thanks for reading and hopefully I can get caught up soon.