Thread: Stollen
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Gregory Morrow[_34_] Gregory Morrow[_34_] is offline
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Default Stollen



Dave Smith wrote:

> Don Kleist wrote:
> >
> > Virginia Tadrzynski wrote:
> > > I have been requested to duplicate a recipe for Christmas Eve. It is
> > > stollen using Pillsbury Crescent rolls and if I remember correctly it

has a
> > > cream cheese filling. I searched Pillsbury's website and came up dry.

Any
> > > ideas? The lady who originally made it has passed away and the

daughter
> > > boils water nicely, so forget asking her for her mom's recipe.
> > > -ginny
> > >
> > >

> > Never heard of Stollen with a filling. Here is my version. I have been
> > making them each year since the mid 1970s.

>
> A local German deli sells a Stollen with a marzipan filling.
>



Is it only *real* stollen if it's baked in Dresden...??? Viz:


http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3247571.ece


Battle of the bakeries as rival cities lay claim to stollen recipe

By Tony Paterson in Berlin

Published: 13 December 2007

"The threat of a vicious and protracted "stollen" war is looming over
Germany after one of the country's leading chefs claimed the eastern city of
Dresden had spent more than 500 years pretending to be the inventor of the
famous "Dresdner stollen" Christmas cake.

The loaf-shaped confection, usually containing almonds, raisins, marzipan
and lemon peel and coated with powdered sugar, is a must for most German
families over the festive season. It is supposed to represent the baby Jesus
wrapped in swaddling clothes.

For more than 530 years, Dresden has claimed to have invented the cake,
which it subsequently bestowed with the title "Dresdner Christstollen", or
Christmas cake. The delicacy survived both world wars and Communism and is
now exported around the globe from Dresden bakeries where it is produced.

Last weekend, thousands of tourists flocked to Dresden to watch the world's
biggest stollen, some 4.35 metres long, being pulled through the streets in
a procession to the city's market. There, it was ritually cut into 7,000
slices with a 17th-century stollen knife the size of a machete.

But an unwelcome element of doubt has clouded the city's traditional
pre-Christmas stollen festivities. Reinhard Lämmel, a leading east German
chef and author of the recently published Saxony Cookbook, insists that the
Dresdner stollen was not invented in Dresden at all - but in the nearby town
of Torgau.

He claims there is firm historical evidence that a court baker called
Heinrich Drasdow made a stollen at Hartenstein Castle near Torgau by in
1457 - 17 years before the cake was ever mentioned in connection with
Dresden. "The Dresdners did not invent the stollen, they merely refined it,"
Mr Lämmel said.

In a further insult to Dresden, the chef claims that the Saxon dialect
spoken by the city's inhabitants mumbles High German to such an extent that
the original name for the cake - Drasdower Stollen - became corrupted into
Dresdner Stollen. "Drasdow became Dresden over time and the stollen's
original baker was forgotten," added Mr Lämmel, whose findings have been
backed by historians.

Drasdow was the first to add butter, sugar and raisins to the stollen and
his recipe revolutionised the insipid Christmas cakes of the 15th century,
which suffered because of a papal ban on the use of butter during Advent.

Predictably, the challenge to the Dresdner stollen's supremacy has been
dismissed by the city's bakers. Wolfgang Hesse, the chairman of the
venerable Dresden Stollen Protection Association, said: "The real Christmas
stollen comes only from Dresden. It does not matter who baked what 500 years
ago."

Marlon Gauk, who each year exports 80 per cent of the 7,000 stollens he
produces, added: "Dresden is the place that refined the stollen and made it
world famous. It sells very well, so I am not surprised that others are
trying to get in on the act."

Such remarks have only encouraged Torgau - whose only other big claim to
fame is that it was the meeting point for the advancing Russian and US
armies at the end of the Second World War - to step up its claim to be the
inventor of the cake.

Anja Jerichen, the town's tourism director, said the story of Heinrich
Drasdow would in future be a prominent feature of its guided tours. "We are
going to start marketing our stollen tradition properly," she said."

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