Directions: |
Directions:In a medium bowl, combine the first 6 ingredients and let sit for a few hours, or better a few days. (The rum getting into those raisins and currents is a tasty thing.) In large bowl of electric mixer, dissolve the yeast and 1 T of brown sugar in the warm milk. Let stand until foamy, 5-10 minutes. Add 1-1/2 C of flower and beat at medium speed for 2 minutes (or about 300 strokes by hand). Let sponge rise until light and bubbly, about 15 minutes. Drain liquid off fruit, reserving liquid (I hardly ever find any significant amount of liquid). Toss the fruit with 2-3 T of flour. Stir down sponge and add ¾ C brown sugar, eggs, melted butter, lemon zest, vanilla, almond extract, and enough flour to make a soft dough. Turn it out on a floured surface. Clean and grease the bowl and set aside. Knead the dough 8-10 minutes or until it is smooth and elastic; it will be soft and buttery. Generously flour your surface and pat the dough into a rough rectangle about ½" thick.Aprinkle the fruit and nuts over the surface. Knead until all that stuff is evenly distributed. It will be a sticky, gooey mess for a while, but stick with it flouring your hands now and then. Place the dough in the greased bowl turning to coat all sides. Cover with a damp towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about an hour and a half. Punch down dough and knead for about 30 seconds.Divide in two and pat each out to an oval about 8"x12". Brush with melted butter, sprinkle with white sugar and fold along the long dimension, leaving an inch or two on two buttered cookie sheets. Lightly press and pinch the top edge onto the lower to seal. Cover with buttered wax paper and let rise until increased by about half, about an hour. Bake at 350 for 35-45 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centers comes out clean. If the tops start getting too brown, cover them with foil. As loaves cool, brush them 2 or 3 times with melted butter. Generously sprinkle with powdered sugar when they are cool. (I usually wait until just before I serve them to sift on the sugar.) Cut in thin slices. |
Personal
Notes: |
Personal
Notes: This is such a long recipe that I almost did not add it because it would take so long to type in. But, how could I not include it? For more than 40 years stollen has been the thing Bakers eat on Christmas morning as gifts are opened. Then we get a brunch of bacon and eggs to tide us over until the Christmas feast. It comes from Sharon Tyler Herbst's book "BREADS". The one sad thing is that, this recipe cannot be gluten-free, so every year I experiment with trying to find a recipe so Sara can have something to eat while everyone else eats this. Mostly they pale in comparison, but I think that I finally found a good one for her this year (2018).
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This recipe for Dresden Stollen is from