This Sweet Stollen Bread Is The Ultimate Christmas Bread

Mireille · 11/22/2018 at 6:45 pm

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It has everything you need in sweet bread and it is perfect to serve on Christmas morning. Turn it into a decorative ring and it will be the centerpiece of your table. Ready to learn how you can make stollen bread? Let’s get started!

What You Need For This Recipe

To make this Dutch stollen bread with the almond-sugar paste you need several ingredients. Make sure you have the following ready:

Flour – you can make this bread using wheat flour or all-purpose flour
Yeast – I use instant yeast
Baking soda (optional)
Sugar – to feed the yeast
Seasoning – use Cinnamon or speculaas spices
Salt – to enhance the flavors of the other ingredients
Milk – skimmed milk or plant-based milk
Egg – large egg
Butter – use soft unsalted butter (room temperature)
Pecan nuts – chopped
Raisins – to add to the dough and use to garnish to bread

For the almond-sugar paste you need:

White almonds – a main ingredient of this paste
Sugar – together with almonds you make almond paste
Lemon juice – you need juice
Egg – a large egg

Note that the full ingredients list, including measurements, can be found in the recipe card below.

How To Make Dutch Sweet Stollen Bread

To make this recipe start with the raisins. Put the raisins in warm water so they can plump up. Leave the raisins in the water until you need them in the recipe.
Drain the raisins before you use them in this bread recipe.

Make Almond Paste

Put an equal amount of almonds and sugar in a kitchen machine and blend. Then add the egg until you get a soft paste. Add some lemon juice for freshness.
Take the paste from the kitchen machine onto cling film and store it in the fridge for at least an hour.

Make The Stollen Bread

For the stollen bread first, add all the dry ingredients together and mix through with a wooden spoon. Then add the milk and egg. Leave the butter aside and knead the ingredients into a flexible dough for 8 minutes by hand.
Be aware that the dough can be very sticky when you start. Resist the urge to add more flour. Just flour the board and keep on kneading it will become less sticky.
You can dampen your hands with water to make the kneading easier. Now add the butter in small increments. Make sure that all the butter is absorbed into the dough before adding more butter.
Save some butter for brushing. Let the dough proof for an hour so it can double in size. Roll into a square and add ¾ of the raisins and chopped pecan nuts.
Fold and roll again into a square. Take the almond-sugar paste out of the fridge and spread it across the square and the remaining raisins and pecans.
Now roll the square up into a thick sausage. Cut through the middle and braid the dough by twisting the two halves.
Then roll the braid into a circle. Preheat the oven to 375℉/190℃ and bake the bread on a baking tray in the middle oven for at least 35-40 minutes until golden brown.
Let the bread cool for 10 minutes and brush with the remaining butter.
Some icing sugar for decoration and you have an amazing Dutch Christmas kerststol bread ring. You can have this bread for breakfast, brunch, or lunch.

Christmas Stollen Bread Recipe

With Christmas around the corner, I am treating you to a Dutch specialty which is a kerststol also known as stollen bread. This bread is a sweet bread with raisins and almond sugar paste.

To make it even more special you can braid it into a bread ring. Just looking at the result you will want to take a bite. Believe me, if you have taken a bite you want to eat the whole ring.

The original recipe is called kerststol which is a rich bread with raisins, currants, nuts, and almond sugar paste.

The almond sugar paste is easy to make from scratch and needs to be shaped into a sausage. In regular stollen bread, the sweet almond sugar paste is centered in the middle, and you can see the paste when you cut the bread into slices.

So to infuse the whole bread with the almond-sugar paste you can braid it with two tails. Braiding the bread this way gives the bread a more subtle almond sugar taste and it is decorative as opposed to the original shape.

Making this bread requires some serious kneading. If you have a kitchen machine with a dough hook you can let it take care of the heavy lifting.

I made the dough by hand and after combining all of the ingredients the dough had to be kneaded for at least 8 minutes to let it become elastic and a little sticky.

Then the butter is added and kneaded thoroughly into a flexible dough.

Be aware that when you start making the dough it can be very sticky and difficult to handle. Resist the urge to add flour but keep on kneading it will become less sticky.

You can dampen your hands to make the kneading of the dough easier.

See How to Make Dutch Stollen Bread

Would you like to see how to make a real Dutch stolen bread yourself? Then watch the instruction video with step-by-step instructions in the recipe card.

The video shows how to easily make the Christmas stollen yourself.

How To Store Stollen Bread

There are a couple of ways you can store this Christmas stollen bread. Bread doesn’t store well in the fridge so that is not one of the options:

Bread tin – you can store it outside of the fridge for a couple of days in a bread tin or a Ziploc bag
Freezer – slice the bread into smaller pieces and store it in the freezer for a couple of weeks

More Traditional Dutch Recipes

If you like this traditional bread recipe you may also like some of these Dutch recipes. Take a look:

I hope you love this stollen bread recipe as much as I do!

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Dutch Christmas Kerststol Bread Ring

Mireille

Serves: 14-16 Prep Time: 70 minutes Cooking Time: 35-40 minutes

Stollen bread or Dutch Christmas stollen bread ring is a sweet bread with raisins, pecan, and almond sugar paste.

Ingredients

1½ cups wheat flour (375 grams)
2⅘ teaspoons dry yeast (9 grams)
½ teaspoon of baking soda (optional)
50 grams of granulated sugar
⅔ cups of lukewarm milk (160 grams)
1 large egg
½ teaspoon of cinnamon or speculaas spices
1 teaspoon salt (5 grams)
3½ tablespoons soft unsalted butter (50 grams)
1 cup of raisins
½ cup of chopped pecan nuts
Almond sugar paste:
1¼ cups almond (170 grams)
1 cup sugar (170 grams)
1 egg
1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Instructions

Put the almonds and sugar in a kitchen machine and blend. Add the egg and blend until a soft paste
Add some lemon juice and blend
Put almond sugar paste on cling film and store in the fridge for at least an hour
Combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt, baking soda (optional), and cinnamon or speculaas spices. Mix with a spoon
Add the milk and egg and combine with a wooden spoon
Put on a board and knead into a flexible dough for 8 minutes
Save some butter for brushing
Add the butter in small increments kneading the dough until all the butter is absorbed
Proof for 1 hour
Preheat the oven to 375℉/190℃. Roll the dough into a square and cover it with ¾ of the raisins and chopped pecan nuts. Fold and roll again into a square
Take the almond sugar paste out of the fridge and spread it across the dough before adding the remaining raisins and pecans
Now roll the square up into a sausage. Cut into through the middle and braid by twisting the two halves Roll into a circle
Bake in the oven for at least 35-40 minutes until golden brown
Let it cool for 10 minutes and brush with the remaining butter
Sprinkle icing sugar for decoration and you have an amazing Dutch Christmas kerststol bread ring

This Sweet Stollen Bread Is The Ultimate Christmas Bread

What You Need For This Recipe