The Stollen Bakery - Oebel Aachen, Germany

The Stollen Bakery

The preparation of Stollen largely depends on the combination of the recipe. More over, much time is required for the preparation of Stollen doughs, as they are heavy yeast doughs containing large quantities of butter and margarine. In addition to selected flavours, spices, candied lemon and orange peel, almonds, nuts and raisins, quite often there is also added Marzipan to the dough. The preparation of a tasty Stollen that keeps well from such a heavy dough demands great professional skills of the baker.

It is therefore inevitable to separate dough pieces and ripen them to act as pieces of dough and ripen them to act as raising agents, for they are as important for the lightness and taste of the cake as all other ingredients. Another decisive factor is to allow the dough to reach its full maturity. Therefore the preparation of the dough is continuously interrupted by resting periods. For the development of the flavour, it is important that the raisins are soaked in flavours or in Rum, so that they can fully develop their aromas in the Stollen.

Prior to cutting the Stollen for consumption, it should be kept in store for a few weeks. Freshly baked Stollen are often not as rich in taste as they usually are following a certain period of rest.

The traditional Stollen is the folded Stollen, and not the Stollen made in a baking pan. This fact reveals the actual skil of a Stollen baker, because the folded Stollen, possibly stuffed with Marzipan or Persipan, are more difficult to do.

The procedure for baking Stollen is as follows:

First the recipe is being compiled. There are Stollen which are calculated on a basis of 100 kilograms of flour over 60 kilograms of butter or margarine and 140 kilograms of candied lemon and orange peels, nuts, almonds and raisins. After having completed the recipe, the raisins are soaked in Rum or other flavours. The flour will be weighed, and part of the flour separated to be mixed with yeast eventually to be used as raising agent.

When the flour-yeast mixture has matured sufficiently, the dough will be prepared. Flour, water, the raising agent, fat, possibly flavours, nuts, almonds and other ingredients will be kneaded into a dough. Shortly before ending the kneading, raisins, the candied orange and lemon peels will be added and equally distributed throughout the dough.

After the kneading is completed, the dough has to rest again. Then it will be weighed., The various pieces of dough will be rounded off and again put to rest. Following this rest period, the dough will be formed into long pieces, rolled out, and in case of filled Stollen, the dough will be filled with marzipan, folded over and put on baking tins.

Now the separate pieces have to rest again and thereafter baked in the oven. After baking, all Stollen will be dipped in butter or fat and spread with refined sugar.

After the Stollen have cooled off, they will be covered with icing sugar and packed for the customers.

Do you fancy eating Stollen now?

The Pastry Chefs from Konditorei Brüder Oebel, Köln (Cologne) is one of the largest enterprises of this kind with 100 years of tradition. Their Stollen specialities are exported into 23 different countries and they will be also glad to bake your Stollen.