Much like the Dutch Kerststol or the more familiar Italian Panettone during the holiday season, the German Stollen is a loaf-shaped dense sweet dough or bread-like cake containing dried fruit, covered with cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, or fondant icing.
The German people take their stollen seriously. So much so that they have an official association of Stollen Bakers, so when shopping for your stollen loaf, be sure it dons the golden “Seal of Quality" on the package. Only products labeled with that seal are genuine Dresden Christmas Stollen. The Stollenschutzverband (Trade Protection Society Dresden Stollen) awards this quality seal as an authenticity certificate and guarantees that the respective Stollen has been made by hand in Greater Dresden and meets the high-quality demands of the Stollenschutzverband, like from Bäckerei & Konditorei Gnauck Bakery. I wouldn't want you eating an unofficial Stollen!
Traditionally, Dresden’s bakers and pastry chefs celebrate the so-called Stollen Festival every Saturday before the 2nd Advent in Dresden, Germany. This year it will be celebrated on Saturday, December 9th.
If you dare try, here's an authentic recipe, translated—note measurements in grams.
Dresden Stollen -recipe with one "Metze" (4 kg) flour for 6 four-pound-stollen
4000-gram wheaten flour
1600 gram butter
500-gram butter lard
600-gram preserving sugar
750 gram sweet almonds, pulverized
250-gram bitter almonds, pulverized
600-gram candied lemon peel
3000-gram seedless raisins
1000 gram milk
250-gram yeast
50-gram salt
100-gram lemon peel
10-gram Macis
300-gram rum
1 gram vanilla pod
Dresden Christmas Stollen (translated from native tongue, German)
The Dresden woman Lenelies Pause delivered in her monography about the "royal Children," a stollen recipe in his highly developed form. It demonstrated the high school of the art to bake Dresden stollen:
"There are a lot of tales. History tells they don't use milk; they better take the rich cream, 2 cans, full, directly from a farmer. It is the speech of a "Metze" (4 kilograms) dusty wheat flour. This "Metze" devours desirous 2 kilograms of the best butter, snatch 3-kilogram seedless raisins with themselves, and satisfies themselves with 1 kilogram of almonds. It desires a hand full with bitter glassy candied lemon peel planed orange peel, also takes a breath mace - rubbed soft over a piece of sugar with powerless hand -, demands a charge of the good old Arrak, and takes the sugar not in the modern crystallized form, but after the good old tradition as a hat which is packed in blue paper, and then also only martyred, sifted and on the lemon rubbed off. The Stollen is an unready child only mixed, formed, and baked. With 1000 gram melted hot butter, the stollen will be slowly and softly touched und steeped; sugar smells like vanilla, sinks up like snow clouds, till it is finally carried home with a sweet aroma, which marches through the whole city in the days before Christmas and all bakeries, which breaths out of all corridors."
