Stollen Memories

"Will you come and listen to the bread?" is one of my favorite sentences, uttered by my father whenever he wants a second opinion on the loaf of Dresdner Stollen just pulled from the oven. He picks up the bread in his left hand and gives it two deft pats with his right. When the bread is done, it should sound like the back of a burped baby. Making Stollen is, in fact, like raising a child; it requires patience, coaxing, coddling, steady-handed discipline, and, ultimately, love. If done right, it is one of the most rewarding things imaginable; if botched (which is discomfortingly easy to do), you've got a sociopath on your hands.

Good Stollen is hard to come by, I think, because of the number of corners that tempt cutting: traditional Stollen contains candied citrus peel, Sultana raisins, currants, glazed cherries, toasted almonds, and brandy worked into a rich, yeasty dough. With all these caveats, it's no wonder that in most houses, gifts of Stollen end up in quarantine with the fruitcake and other Christmas plagues.

Since the candied citrus peel is the deadliest pitfall, which can make or break the Stollen, I'll begin there. Commercially candied peel, as Dad discovered after a (relatively) mediocre batch of bread years ago, is a terrible idea. Even if you manage to avoid impostors (bland melon rind is often passed off as citrus peel), it will likely be doused in food coloring that makes it glow like a cartoon carcinogen, and so saturated with sugar that it loses its citrus character and won't prickle the palate. Time-consuming though it may be, candying your own peel is infinitely worthwhile. The distinctive flavors of different fruits--lemon, lime, tangerine, orange, grapefruit--are opened up and intensified if the peel is softened in boiling water, simmered for hours in sugar syrup, and coated in confectioners' sugar--a process that transforms pocked, leathery strips of peel into soft lumps that look like smooth, colored glass.

The store-bought glazed cherries suffer from the same problems as the commercially candied peel, but luckily, they can be dealt with similarly. The important addendum here is that big sweet cherries cooked in sugar syrup will be unbearably saccharin. Instead, we use the delicate, mouth-puckering sour cherries from the Montmorency tree in our backyard, which, when gently simmered for hours in sugar syrup, retain a little tang as they sweeten and turn a dark burgundy.

The ingredients for Stollen dough read like the most wanted list of the American Heart Association: eggs, butter, sour cream, whole milk. Although these give the dough its richness and density, the yeast ensures it's never too heavy. Finally, the peel, cherries, raisins, and currants are chopped, soaked in brandy, and folded into the dough, which is arranged into oblong, attenuated loaves with a ridge down the middle, a traditional shape said to represent the Christ Child in swaddling clothes--fitting, since as far as I'm concerned, Stollen is the most spiritual experience of the season.