Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Taste of Christmas. Stollen from Ryes and Shine

Taste of Christmas

Stollen from Ryes and Shine

Cutting the Christmas cake. By the way, that is a brilliant
bread knife and you can buy it at the Ryes 'n Shine stall!



Stollen is a traditional German Christmas bread. More like a cake, really, and it is quite sweet. We just bought ours from Angela Nöthlings of the local Ryes 'n Shine bakery.

Angela gives her breads (sourdough) all the time they need, and that is also true of her delicious Stollen. Almonds are a key ingredient. They are first simmered, then snapped out of their skins, then shaved with a beautiful piece of equipment (a small manual nut grinder) that belonged to her mother.

Angela explains: "Shaved almonds - rather than ground - will create a marzipan texture within the stollen. There is no extra marzipan put into these. Using ground almonds would be a lot easier and faster, but at Ryes & Shine we (ie I) prefer to do things the old-fashioned slow-paced way, which tends to result in better tastes and textures too."

When we picked ours up last week, there was a note attached telling us not to cut it until the 17th. However, we did go a day earlier, and it worked out very well indeed. It is indeed something different, quite sweet. I have a bottle of Joe’s Amaretto here (from Elbow Lane) and was thinking of pairing them but they might not work together as the Amaretto is also loaded with almonds. I'm thinking a sweet German wine would be better!

In any event, the Stollen is one of our Tastes of Christmas. More on Ryes and Shine here.
Before the slicing!

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