Stollen is “fruit bread” that typically lurks in the darker corners of supermarket bakery departments until Christmas, when it emerges like a glorious butterfly to take its rightful place front and center in the bakery section.
- Kind of a dry fruit loaf
- Tastes better than that sounds
- Traditional at Christmas
- …served with mulled wine or punch (or just a coffee)
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What is a Stollen?
(Dusted and ready for consumption)
Think of a Stollen as the love child of a fruit cake and a loaf of bread: it’s typically baked from a yeasty dough (replete with dried fruit soaked in rum), then covered in icing sugar.
Like you’d expect, you eat a Stollen in slices, often with your coffee or Christmas punch. Some people put butter and jam on it.
As with just about every baked product in this part of the world, you find different varieties in Vienna. At Christmas, you often see marzipan, poppy seed or nut versions, though the kind with dried fruit remains the classic.
(Slicing reveals the dried fruit within)
Consider the Stollen an integral component of the Christmas bakery selection alongside Lebkuchen, Christmas biscuits and Spekulatius.
This delight has been part of that selection for centuries in central Europe. The earliest known written mention apparently involved an obligation placed on 14th-century bakers in Naumburg (just southwest of Leipzig) to deliver a Stollen or its equivalent to the local bishop at Christmas.
(Better than another pair of novelty socks.)
The Stollen now has many fans in the UK and USA, too, largely because you can make it quite easily. We bake them as seasonal gifts for friends and family each year; they last quite a few days in an airtight container.
How do you say Stollen?
At first glance, Stollen seems an easy word to say in Austrian-flavoured German – “stoll” to rhyme with “doll” (British English) and an “en” like in “burden” (ditto).
The “st” has a “shh” at the start though – “shhtollen”.
