Sourdough Stollen for the Sourdough Surprises

The Sourdough Surprises challenged us to bake a German stollen, a special bread-like cake that is often made around Christmas time with candied and dried fruit, nuts and spices and sprinkled with powdered sugar. Well, I do not know about this having its roots in Germany, as this seems pretty similar to a typical Slovak sweet bread baked around Christmas as well but well, ok :) 

I love baking with my sourdough starter, so why not to try it? Well, maybe the reason for not trying might have been that as soon as I started measuring ingredients for this, my scale did broke. I do not like using "cups" unit for sourdough recipes but what could I do?

As to recipe, I have adopted a yeast recipe using a portion of 1:2:3, and I think it worked nicely. So this is the recipe:

We will need:

90 g of 100% (wheat) starter
1 and 1/2 cups of all purpose flour
2 yolks
1/4 cups of caster sugar
20 g of vanilla sugar (if you do not have this, just use more sugar (3 tablespoons) and add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract)
1/2 cup of milk
90 g of softened butter
approx. 60 g of dried raisins, orange and lemon candied pieces (or other dried fruits)
100 g of marzipan

butter and icing sugar for decoration

This was a half amount of the original recipe.

METHOD:

WARNING - this may seem complicated but it really isn't. You just have to time it and read instructions carefully.

1. 2 days prior actual baking, prepare your sourdough started - mix 70 g of flour with 70 g of water and 2 teaspoons of your sourdough starter from previous baking. Let it rest for 12-18 hours.

2. Mix the sourdough starter with the milk, flour and sugar. Knead it for 10 minutes. Add yolks. Kneed for another 20 minutes. And finally add soft butter and dried fruits. Knead for another 15-20 minutes. Put the dough into oiled bowl. Approximately every 30 minutes (or as you remember) stretch the dough  from bottom and put the stretched part over the rest of the dough. Do the same from the left side - stretch and fold. Then the same from the top, and then from the right side. Repeat the whole circle approximately 3-4 times every 30 minutes. Then let the dough rest for 3 hours or even in the fridge over night for the first rise.

3. Take the risen dough (if you had it in the fridge, take it from it 3 hours before you wan to work with it) and place it on the well floured table. Knead it approximately 7 minutes, the surface should be not sticky. Form a bowl, let it rest for 10 minutes. Knead for another 10 minutes, then form a rectangle. Make a roll from the softened marzipan, and put this in the middle of the dough. Then form a torpedo shape. Cover it with a bowl and let it rise. It should take probably 3 hours.

5. Preheat the oven at 250°C/480°F for at least 15 minutes. Put one pan on which you will bake and also another old ready to be thrown away pan. Carefully place the stollen into the oven on the first pan, and pour 1/2 of cup of water into the second old pan. Be super careful - there will be a lot of steam. As quickly as possible close the oven so that the steam will stay in the oven. Bake for 10 minutes. Lover the temperature at 210°C/410°F and bake for another 10 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 170°C/425°F and bake for another 40-50 minutes.

6. Let the stollen cool on a wire rack. The still hot stollen brush with the butter and cover generously with the icing sugar. It should be completely cold before you will take a piece.

  

Buttered....

Sugarred...

I have to say that despite the improvisation (due to the broken scale), the stollen turned out to be very yummy.