Stollen Bread
Looking for a festive holiday bread that’s both traditional and delicious? This Stollen Bread is filled with fragrant fruits, warm spices, and a hint of rum, bringing the spirit of Christmas to your kitchen. Perfect for gifting or sharing, it’s a holiday classic!
Stollen Bread is a typical Christmas bread from Germany. Like Rum Fruit Cake, it features dried fruit in the form of raisins and rum. However, running through the middle of the bread is marzipan. This adds a delicious extra flavor to what would otherwise be similar to Italian Panettone.
Why you’ll love this recipe
- Christmas Tradition – Baking Stollen Bread is a wonderful tradition. If you’ve never baked it, why not start the tradition this year?
- Flavor – The rich, buttery flavor is so good instantly making you feel indulgent and festive.
- Festive Ingredients – Wherever you are in the world, you probably have treats that use similar ingredients so this Stollen Bread is not too unfamiliar.
- Excellent with tea or coffee – Having guests dropping around? A few slices of Stollen Bread are wonderful to serve with a warming drink.
For complete ingredient quantities and full instructions, please scroll to the printable recipe card at the bottom of the page.
Ingredients
- Basic Ingredients – You’ll need a few baking staples—all-purpose flour, granulated sugar, active dry yeast, whole milk, egg, butter, and powdered sugar for dusting. These ingredients are easy to find and store well, so you’ll be ready whenever you make my Portuguese Sweet Bread.
- Golden and dark raisins – Choose good quality dried fruit for the best flavor.
- Candied citron – Look for candied citron (also known as cedro) in specialty food stores. If unavailable, substitute candied orange or lemon peel.
- Rum – Use dark rum for this recipe. Leftovers can be used to make this Rum Balls Recipe.
- Spices and flavorings – cardamom and nutmeg preferably freshly ground. A vanilla bean plus almond extract.
- Whole almonds – Use blanched almonds which are almonds with the skin removed. To blanch, briefly boil, which makes the skins easy to peel off, leaving smooth, pale almonds.
- Marzipan – Canned or homemade. Try my almond paste from my Pignoli Cookies recipe.
Instructions
Scald milk, cool to lukewarm, and whisk with flour, yeast, sugar, and egg. Cover and let rise until it collapses (about 2 hours).
Beat butter into the sponge, then mix in sugar, spices, vanilla, almond extract, and salt.
Stir in raisins, citron, and almonds, then knead with flour. Cover and let rise until almost doubled (about 1 hour)
Roll dough into a 12-inch oval, place marzipan in the center, and fold dough over it.
Shape into a stollen, place on a lined baking sheet, cover, and let rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Bake at 350°F for 45–55 minutes, brush with butter, and dust generously with powdered sugar. Cool before slicing.
Substitutions
- Rum – Use brandy or bourbon instead of rum.
- Raisins – Instead of raisins use currants, dried cranberries, or chopped dried apricots.
- Candied citron – A tablespoon of finely grated lemon zest if candied citron is unavailable.
- Spices – Subtitutue your favorite Christmas spices like cinnamon, mixed spice, or mace.
Top Tips
- To prevent a dry stollen, be sure to soak the dried fruit in rum overnight. If you have time, two or three days are even better.
- Use fresh yeast for the best results; even dried yeast can become stale and inactive over time.
- Check that the sponge becomes bubbly and frothy. If it doesn’t, the water may have been too hot and killed the yeast, or the yeast could be stale. In that case, start again with fresh yeast and cooler water.
- Allow the dough to rise fully to achieve a light and airy texture in your final loaf.
- Keep in mind that room temperature affects how yeast dough rises. On warm days, the dough will rise faster, while cooler days may slow the process. Trust what you see rather than strictly following recipe times.
- On a cool day, speed up the rise by creating a warm environment. Place a pan of hot water in a switched-off oven, set the dough bowl on a rack above it, close the door, and let the yeast work. Alternatively, fill the kitchen sink with a couple of inches of warm water and set the bowl in it.
- Take care not to overbake. That stollen bread should be squishy rather than dry and crusty.
Serving Suggestions
Stollen Bread is the perfect end to a festive meal. Serve it with tea, coffee, or dessert wine. Add other Christmas classics to the dessert table like Chocolate Panettone, Panforte, and Italian Butter Cookies.
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Christmas Stollen
Stollen is a wonderful, festive bread typical of Germany. The fruit studded dough is wrapped around a thick cylinder of marzipan representing Jesus wrapped in swaddling cloths.
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Servings:20 slices
Ingredients
Fruit:
- ¾ cup golden and dark raisins
- ¼ cup chopped candied citron
- ¼ cup (60ml) dark rum or brandy
Sponge:
- ¾ cups (180ml) whole milk
- 1 cup (125 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 package (2¼ teaspoons or 7 grams) active dried yeast
- 1 tablespoon granulated white sugar
- 1 large egg at room temperature
Dough:
- ½ cup (1 sticks or 113 grams) unsalted butter, very soft
- ⅓ cup (66 grams) granulated white sugar
- ¾ teaspoons ground cardamom preferably freshly ground
- ¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 vanilla bean split lengthwise, seeds scraped out and reserved
- ½ teaspoon pure almond extract
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ cup blanched whole almonds chopped into medium-sized pieces
- 1 ½ cups (187 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour more if needed
- 6 ounces (170 grams) marzipan homemade or canned
- 2 ounces (½ stick or 60 grams) unsalted butter, melted
- Powdered sugar for dusting
Instructions
- The night before or even 2 or 3 days ahead, combine the raisins, candied citron, and rum in a bowl. Stir several times to distribute the rum evenly. Set aside at room temperature to soak.
To make the sponge
- Scald the milk in a small saucepan over medium heat-you will see steam rising from the surface and small bubbles forming around the edges. Remove the pan from the heat and let milk cool to lukewarm
- Put the flour into a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk in the yeast and sugar. Add the milk and whisk briskly to make a smooth batter. Add the egg and whisk to combine well. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the sponge rise until it more than doubles in volume and then collapses on itself, about 2 hours.
To make the dough
- Using a stand mixer, attach the flat beater and beat the butter into the sponge in 2-tablespoon at a time, on medium speed, beating until incorporated after each addition. Add the sugar, cardamom, nutmeg, vanilla seeds, almond extract, and salt and beat on low to medium-low speed for about 5 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beater, and stir in the raisins and citron, along with any unabsorbed liquor. Add the almonds. Switch to the dough hook. Beating on low speed, gradually add the flour and then knead for 3 to 5 minutes.
- Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise until almost doubled in size, about 1 hour.
To shape the stollen
- Shape the marzipan into a log and roll between your palms to about 11in/approx 28cm long
- Turn the dough out onto an unfloured work surface. Pat the dough into an oval measuring 12 in/30cm long and about 9in/23cm wide at the widest point. If the dough sticks at any point, dust it very lightly with flour. Place the roll of marzipan in the middle of the dough. Lift one side of dough over the marzipan, covering it completely. Then fold the other side over but not all the way. See the photos above for this simplified stollen shaping.
- Line a large baking sheet with non stick baking paper. Put the stollen onto the lined baking sheet. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let rise just the stollen has increased in volume by about half, 45 minutes to 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C.
- When the stollen are ready, remove the plastic wrap and place the pan in the oven. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the stollen is nicely browned.
- Remove the pan from the oven. Allow the stollen to cool for 5 minutes then poke it all over with a toothpick (this will allow the butter to soak in) and immediately brush each stollen with the melted butter. Put the powdered sugar in a fine-meshed sieve and sift a generous layer all over the top of the stollen. Repeat in a few minutes if you see the sugar melting in spots.
- Cool the stollen bread completely on wire cooling racks. You may like to sprinkle with more powdered sugar after cooling.
- The Christmas Stollen Bread can be eaten straight away or aged for two weeks. To do this, wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and then foil. Keep it in a cool place for two weeks.
- To serve, cut into ½-inch thick slices with a sharp serrated knife.
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Nutritional Estimate Per Serving
Calories: 4211kcal | Carbohydrates: 494g | Protein: 79g | Fat: 208g | Saturated Fat: 84g | Cholesterol: 404mg | Sodium: 1415mg | Potassium: 2547mg | Fiber: 31g | Sugar: 189g | Vitamin A: 3951IU | Vitamin C: 5mg | Calcium: 649mg | Iron: 22mg
Nutritional Disclaimer
Nutritional information is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. For accurate results, it is recommended that the nutritional information be calculated based on the ingredients and brands you use.
