Monday, 19 November 2018

After over a decade of missing genuine stollen (German Christmas bread) I made it with the help of a Seiko HBK 151 breadmaker from Japan

It tastes great, and has the texture of stollen my oma made (store-bought stollen never gets this aspect right, in my experience).
Here is the recipe (slightly modified), translated to English from the Chinese version of the manual:

Ingredients

milk 100ml
egg 50g (1egg)
high-gluten flour 160g
low-gluten flour 160g
sugar 64g
salt 2g
butter 90g
ordinary yeast (dry instant yeast) 8.4g
cinnamon 1g
nutmeg 1g

Beat the egg and mix it with the milk, then, right before pouring the mix into the machine, mix it altogether with the dry ingredients and butter using a soft spatula that you can use later if any batter sticks beyond the reach of the flapper at the bottom of the machine mixer-container. The milk, egg, and butter should all be set out or heated to room temperature so that the yeast can get to work right away. 

Nine minutes after pressing "start," a buzzer will beep, and then add a mixture of nuts and dried fruit:

sliced almonds 50g
I used freshly slice-chopped unsalted almonds. All the nuts and fruits were from health food stores here in Taiwan.

raisins 180g
dried fruit mix 80g  
For the fruit, I followed the 180g of raisins, and divided the other dried fruits between dried figs (30g) and dried cranberries (50g). The figs came through, with the fresh nutmeg, glorious.

I didn't have the optional rum on hand, so had to skip it.

Modifications to recipe:
I used freshly grated (on a Japanese metal grater used usually for fresh ginger) cinnamon and nutmeg, and reversed the suggested proportions; there is more cinnamon than nutmeg. (I once rendered inedible a pumpkin pie by following the recipe to the letter.)

powdered sugar (to smother over it while it cools down on a rack)
 Additional note:
I followed the recipe, and it tastes great, but with the HBK 151 breadmaker you probably need to pull it out ten minutes or so earlier than the final buzzer (test with toothpick first). I pulled it out 8 minutes early, and note carefully in the picture it is a bit too browned on the edges, and the lower third of the cake is just slightly overdone (for my taste).

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