The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make Stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.
It has been a while since I've posted on this blog, although I certainly haven't been lacking cooking and taking pictures. At the urging of a friend, I recently joined the Daring Bakers, and as a member, I will be preparing a designated recipe each month and will be posted pictures and comments here. Maybe this mandatory posting will get me back into posting the results of my own creations as well.
In any case, I have to say that at first I was less than thrilled when I found out that this month's recipe was stollen. Not celebrating Christmas, it's not a traditional holiday food for me; nonetheless, I proceeded eagerly. As I discovered, the dough is yeast-based and very rich, and is very much flavored with citrus. One of the add-ins to the dough was candied citrus peel, which had to be prepared from scratch. It was a good opportunity to try out this technique in addition to making the stollen itself.
In the end, the stollen came out looking beautifully. If I made it again, I would perhaps change up the dried fruits and reduce the degree of citrus flavors in the dough.
I'm looking forward to seeing what recipe will be up for next month!
