Stollen was once a nearly tasteless bread made of flour, oats and oil and over time it became a rich, sweet bread with candied fruits and raisins, a typical German Christmas treat.
Christmas time, and I am always trying something new to make it a healthier version. This time I thought about the German Stollen. I never liked it very much as a child because I don’t like candied fruits and raisins. But of course there are many versions today, with marzipan, poppy seeds or chocolate.
Lately I had a talk with a very good German friend who knows the Stollen, which has a masculine article in German, with a feminine article and says ‘die Stolle’. Actually I found out that both ways are possible, her version is the old German way to name it and seems still to be in use in the eastern part of Germany. So this mystery is solved.
History instead tells me it was all but a sweet yummy bread in the past. It was baked the first time for the Council of Trent in 1545 and as ingredients there were only flour, yeast, oil and water. Just to think about it.. for sure more than tasteless. But at that time Advent meant a fasting time, bakers were not allowed to use good, rich ingredients. So there is the dry consistency coming from that I always had in my mind. All changed when a Saxony Duke tried to remove the fact of using only oil. It was expensive in the area, butter was easy to make from cow milk and cheap. Pope Innocent VIII sent the famous ‘Butter-Letter’ to the Prince’s household, that he was allowed to use butter instead of oil, but only in his household. Which didn’t resolved the problem for the country. That became only with Protestantism to be solved. During the centuries of course all became more light and the Stollen more heavy…. in rich, good ingredients.
Maybe the most famous Stollen comes from Dresden in Saxony. Here there is celebrated also the oldest Christmas market, the Striezelmarkt. Today it has more than 3 million visitors. It was mentioned the first time in 1434. The Saturday before the 2nd Advent there is a giant Stollen of around 3 to 4 tons that is cut for all the people of the festival. It could be a great reason to visit this Christmas market one day and live this old tradition.
I didn’t bake such a big one, but just the opposite: little Stollen bites or confection. I wanted them together with some other Christmas goodies packed in a Christmas bag for all guests of a friend’s invitation. We went to celebrate Christmas Eve in her house with the family and my contribution to it was the baking. And all eat paleo, healthy Christmas cakes.
I found a lot of different recipes and worked through two different ones to make my own gluten-free, dairy-free and refined sugar-free recipe. It came out so nicely. The texture is a little lighter than the original one, I omitted the candied fruits but put raisins (most of the people like them) and almonds instead.
Enjoy!
- 150 gr all purpose paleo flour
- 100 gr tapioca flour
- 25 gr active yeast
- 50 ml almond milk
- 75 gr coconut flower sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla paste
- 75 gr almonds (roughly ground)
- 50 gr dark chocolate chips
- 150 gr ghee (melted)
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 fresh ground lemon zest
- 125 gr coconut cream
- 1 fresh squeezed lemon or lime juice
- 50 gr ghee (melted)
- 50 gr icing sugar
- Put the coconut cream and the lemon juice in a bowl and mix until creamy. Set aside.
- In a middle sized bowl add the paleo flour and the tapioca, whisk. Make a little well in the middle and add the warmed up milk, the sugar, the yeast and the vanilla, mix the wet ingredients a little until combined and put the bowl in a warm place for 30 minutes. The yeast should bubble a little bit after the time. The warm place could be the oven with light switched on.
- Take the bowl out of the oven, preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F
- Mix the flour with the wet ingredients and add one after the other the rest of the ingredients. The coconut cream is the last ingredient.
- Put some parchment paper on a cookie tray and form ping pong ball sized batches on the tray. Bake for 15 minutes. After 10 minutes have a look, they should be golden and nearly dry when you put a toothpick in the middle of one of the Stollen bites.
- Take them out of the oven, and meanwhile they cool a little, melt some more ghee. With a brush put some ghee on the top of the bites and then dust some icing sugar on the top. You can do this two or three times to have a thicker sugar coating.
- Let them cool out completely on a cooling rack and then store them in an airtight container.
I omitted the candied fruit and the raisins as I don't like them. But of course it is your choice to put them instead of the almonds
