Winter Saxony is undoubtedly one of the most magical Christmas regions in Germany. The world fame for this region has brought the art of unique beauty and delicacy of woodcarving of local artisans and the sparkling lights of the Striezelmarkt - the oldest Christmas market in the country. The famous fair on the central Altmarkt square in the historic center of Dresden is rapidly approaching its 600th anniversary. The Striezelmarkt Dresden Christmas market is full of bright lights, children's eyes glowing with delight, delicious aromas of gingerbread and mulled wine, Christmas melodies and all kinds of New Year's gifts.
Every year, tens of thousands of visitors and tourists from all over the world come to this fair not only for gifts and Christmas sweets, but also to fill their hearts with the mood of Real Christmas. Only here you can buy famous toys and traditional Christmas decorations from the best German woodcarvers: Christmas pyramids, puppets, figurines of angels, nutcrackers - the choice is huge, each work is a real masterpiece. But it's impossible to imagine Christmas in Dresden without an authentic Dresden stollen.
German Stollen has been around for about 700 years and is regarded worldwide as one of the most famous and loved of all Christmas baked goods. Sweet cakes and breads strewn with candied fruits and nuts are hallmarks of Christmas baked goods in many regions of the world. Such a cake is traditional for many English-speaking countries, and in Italy it is panettone, in Poland it is a Christmas cake, julekake in Norway, bolo-rei in Portugal and birnenbrot in Switzerland. But none of them is valued as highly worldwide as the German Stollen.
Christmas Stollen, known in Germany as Christstollen, is a yeast bread baked with dried fruits, citrus fruits, nuts and spices. Its varieties are Mandelstollen (stollen with almonds), Mohnstollen (stollen with poppy seeds), Quarkstollen (stollen with cottage cheese), Nuss-Stollen (stollen with nuts), Butterstollen (stollen with a high oil content), Dresdner Stollen (Dresden Marzipstollen) (stollen with marzipans). Among the most modern versions of stollen, there is even a champagne stollen, raisins for it are pre-soaked in expensive champagne. There is also a special recipe - the stollen of Westphalian bakers, the recipe of which was developed by the association of bakers from the Westfalen-Lippe region. This version of the stollen is made exclusively from ingredients native to the area. Geography required changes to the list of ingredients, so the almonds used for the classic stollen were replaced by hazelnuts, and dried apples, cherries and plums took the place of raisins and candied fruits. In addition, local apple vodka has replaced rum, which is used to soak dried fruits in classic stollen varieties. And one more important detail - a real traditional stollen is sprinkled with a thick layer of powdered sugar, reminiscent of the swaddled Christ, and filled with aromatic spices that convey the warmth of the Christmas season.
Stollen symbolism
The meaning of the German word "stollen" once meant a pillar or boundary stone of a city. It is also believed that in ancient times it also meant the entrance to the mine. Some historians believe that the characteristic shape of the stollen was shaped by the mine tunnel of the silver and tin industry of the time. But there is also a religious symbolism in it, according to which bread is a symbol of the body of Christ. The traditional shape of the stollen has remained unchanged to this day and resembles the baby Jesus lying in snow-white swaddling clothes.The very characteristic, overlapping edges of the stollen and the abundant dusting of powdered sugar convey the allegory especially vividly. This is probably why this stollen is traditionally called Christstollen, or the Stollen of Christ.
Stollen's story
Dresdner Christstollen Christstollen is inextricably linked with the history of Dresden itself and its rich cultural heritage. Stollen's history is the cultural history of Dresden.
Stollen was born in the bakeries of medieval monasteries and guilds. The oldest documents in which he was mentioned date back to 1329, where the stollen appears as a Christmas gift to Bishop Heinrich in Naumburg (Saale). In those days, stollen was baked goods for the Catholic Advent fasting (from the Latin adventus - parish), so the dough for stollen was made only from yeast, flour and water. His taste, of course, was very modest. The Catholic Church did not allow the use of butter or milk during fasting as a sign of abstinence.
Real Saxons have always had a reputation for life-lovers, and in 1430, Elector Ernst of Saxony and his brother Duke Albrecht turned to Pope Nicholas V with a request to allow him to use butter instead of rapeseed oil when baking stollen. The request was denied. Actually, it is the Dresden stollen, as a food that is eaten during fasting, for the first time officially mentioned in 1474 in the documents of the Christian hospital of St. Bartholomew, where the first recipe for stollen was first recorded. At the hospital of St. Bartholomew on Christmas Eve, patients were treated to a simple bun, baked according to church dogma, only from yeast, flour and water. And only in 1491, at the personal request of the kürfürst Ernst of Saxony, the head of the Catholic Church of that time, Pope Innocent VIII, allowed in a special letter, which went down in the history of the church as the “Butter Decree”, to use butter and milk for baking stollen during fasting. True, not for nothing, but for a generous donation to the church, specifically at that moment in time - for the construction of a new cathedral. Since then, bakers were allowed to use the richer ingredients for baking stollen, and although the permission initially extended only to the Dresden nobility, it quickly spread to all parishioners.
Since then, the Dresden Stollen has developed into an extraordinarily tasty sweet bread with many additional ingredients and has become an important symbol of the region. Perhaps to compensate for centuries of starvation and baking stollen without butter, the Saxons eventually transformed stollen into a unique creamy bread stuffed with fruit. It is believed that the idea of adding various flavors to the stollen dough belongs to the court baker Heinrich Drassdo from Torgau. Perhaps it is he who owes the merit of spreading the Stollen throughout Saxony in the form in which we know it today. Stollen has finally become the real and unique bread of Christmas celebrations. After some time, Saxony became Protestant, but the Stollins remained in it forever.
Historical documents contain references to the fact that since 1560, every year, as a gift for the holy holiday, the Saxon ruler baked 2 Christmas stollens 1.5 m long and 36 pounds in weight by eight of the city's best pastry chefs with the help of eight apprentices.
King August II, probably the most famous ruler of Saxony, commissioned bakers from Dresden to bake a giant stollen in 1730 in order to honor the Saxon military - an event to which he invited important dignitaries from all over Europe in the hope of finding military allies. About 100 bakers and their apprentices have worked on baking this unique product. 3,600 eggs, 326 liters of whipped milk and 20 hundred measures of flour were used to make the dough. The finished stollen weighed 1.8 tons, had a length of 8.23 m and a width of 5.49 m. To bake such a giant, an exclusive oven was specially designed and manufactured according to the design of the court architect Peppelmann.A convoy of eight horses was needed to transport the stollen to the king's table, and a 1.6 m long knife was used to cut the stollen, which was also specially designed and manufactured for this holiday. Stollen was cut into 24,000 pieces according to the number of participants in the feast.
In the capital of Saxony, Stollen was originally called Striezel. It is thanks to the Striezel that the Dresden Christmas market is still called Striezelmarkt today. It has existed for over five centuries and is officially the oldest in Germany. The first Christmas market in Germany was held in Dresden in 1434. Since then, this market, the Dresdner Striezelmarkt, has continued to open and operate every year before Christmas. After the end of the 30-year war in 1648, Dresden bakers achieved the highest privilege - they alone have the right to sell their stollens on the Striezelmarkt. Every year on Saturday before the second Advent, the famous Dresdner Stollenfest is held with the traditional manufacture of Germany's largest Christstollen. Every year a horse-drawn carriage takes this giant through the streets of the cities to the Christmas market. By tradition, an exact copy of the original 12-kilogram knife from the times of Augustus the Strong is used to cut a huge stollen. The first piece, according to tradition, goes to the mayor of the city, and then the stollen is cut into thousands of pieces, which are sold to everyone, and the proceeds from the sale go to charity. The Stollenfest is the main event in the pre-Christmas season in Dresden. Every year more and more visitors, trade guilds, associations and private bakers participate in the Stollen Festival.
The popularity of the Dresden stollen became so great in the world that at the beginning of the 20th century, traditional Dresden bakeries were forced to start a real war with, as we now call it, counterfactual stollen. Today the brand "Dresdner Stollen" is a registered trademark, and it can only be used by selected bakeries from Dresden, provided that their stollen meet absolutely all the criteria and requirements for the recipe and manufacturing technology of a real Dresden stollen. "Dresdner Stollen / Dresden Stollen" is a protected original trademark which, since 1997, covers only those products that are baked in the city of Dresden and its surroundings. According to the standard, for every 10 kg of flour in the Dresden Stollen, there must be at least 3 kg of dehydrated fat, 50% of which is milk fat, as well as 1 kg of almonds, 7 kg of dried fruits and candied fruits.
Stollen today and tomorrow
Today, as centuries ago, the Dresden Stollen is an important pre-Christmas tradition in Germany. Each baker has their own secret ingredients in the recipe for this dessert. Raisins, butter, sweet and bitter almonds, candied orange and lemon peel, flour, water, and yeast are essential ingredients for stollan. Baking also requires whole milk or whole milk powder, crystal sugar, lemon zest, table salt, powdered sugar, aromatic spices and alcohol for a spicy note. In no case is the addition of margarine or artificial preservatives or flavors allowed.
Only the best bakers of Dresden own the official "classic" recipe of the Dresden Stollen. And the Dresden Christmas Stollen, made according to old recipes, can now be bought in the most famous bakeries in Dresden. One of the most delicious stollen is offered by the Dresdner Stollen manufactory, invariably confirming the high quality of its products with a special certificate. However, every Saxon family has its own “grandmother's recipe” for the Christmas Dresden Stollen, which, according to tradition, is also considered secret and is passed down from generation to generation.
In many German families that honor the traditions of their ancestors, baking Christmas stollen is an annual family ritual even today. Usually baking starts in mid-October or early November. The older women in the family bake 2-4 tunnels a day every day for a week, as most of them will be presented to friends and family as a traditional Christmas present. Knead the dough by hand as before, then let it rise, shape and bake. Further, the stollens, packed in parchment, will be left to ripen until Christmas. Stollen must be matured for at least 3 weeks for its flavor and texture to truly develop, and it can easily be stored under proper conditions for several months.
The traditional tin box, in which this most famous stollen in the world has been packed for 2 centuries in a row, bears a numbered oval gold seal depicting the elector of Saxony August the Strong, as a guarantee of the authenticity and high quality of the product.
Of all the Christmas baked goods that exist in the world, the Dresden Stollen is the most famous, having not only a centuries-old history, but also its own personal website (www.dresdnerstollen.com/en/) and its own Stollenfest holiday, to become a member of at least once in your life - great luck or, if you like, a real Christmas miracle.
Read also: The 26th Stollenfest will take place in Dresden on December 7
Cooking recipes:
- Dresden Christmas Stollen
- Christmas Butter Stollen
- Poppy christmas stollen
- Traditional Christmas Stollen
