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Stollen ( or ) is a fruit cake of nuts, spices, and dried or candied fruit, coated with powdered sugar or icing sugar and often containing marzipan. It is a traditional Germans Christmas bread. During the Christmas season the cake-like loaves are called Weihnachtsstollen (after "Weihnachten", the German word for Christmas) or Christstollen (after Christ). A ring-shaped stollen made in a Bundt cake or Gugelhupf pan is called a Stollenkranz (stollen wreath).
Dresden stollen (originally Striezel), a moist, heavy bread filled with fruit, was first mentioned in an official document in 1474, and Dresdner stollen remains notable Meyers Lexikon : "Besonders bekannt ist der Dresdner Stollen" ("the Dresden Stollen is especially well-known") and available – amongst other places – at the Dresden Christmas market, the Striezelmarkt. Dresden stollen is produced in the city of Dresden and distinguished by a special seal depicting King Augustus II the Strong. This "official" stollen is produced in only 110 Dresden bakeries.
The Advent season was a time of fasting, and bakers were not allowed to use butter, only oil, and the cake was tasteless and hard. In the 15th century, in medieval Saxony (in central Germany, north of Bavaria and south of Brandenburg), the Prince Elector Ernst (1441–1486) and his brother Duke Albrecht (1443–1500) decided to remedy this by writing to the Pope in Rome. The Saxony bakers needed to use butter, as oil in Saxony was expensive, hard to come by, and had to be made from turnips.
Pope Nicholas V (1397–1455), in 1450 denied the first appeal. Five popes died before finally, in 1490, Pope Innocent VIII (1432–1492) sent a letter, known as the "Butter-Letter", to the prince's successor. This granted the use of butter (without having to pay a Indulgence), but only for the Prince-Elector and his family and household.
Others were also permitted to use butter, but on the condition of having to pay annually 1/20 of a gold coin to support the building of the Freiberg Minster. The papal restriction on the use of butter was removed when Saxony became Protestant.
Over the centuries, the bread changed from being a simple, fairly tasteless "bread" to a sweeter bread with richer ingredients, such as marzipan, although traditional stollen is not as sweet, light, and airy as the copies made around the world.
In the GDR, Dresden stollen were sent to West Germany as a way of thanking the citizens of West Germany for sending care packets (Westpaket), as they were both available to the GDR citizens and of a high enough standard to be appreciated as gifts.
Commercially made stollen has become a popular Christmas food in Britain in recent decades, complementing traditional dishes such as mince pies and Christmas pudding. All the major supermarkets sell their own versions, many made in Germany, and it is often baked by home bakers. Jay Rayner: Christmas taste test: stollen
Dresden's Christmas market, the Striezelmarkt, was mentioned in the chronicles for the first time in 1474.
The tradition of baking Christmas stollen in Dresden is very old. Christmas stollen in Dresden was already baked in the 15th century.
In 1560, the bakers of Dresden offered the rulers of Saxony Christmas stollen weighing each as gifts, and the custom continued.
Augustus II the Strong (1670–1733) was the Elector of Saxony, King of Poland and the Grand Duke of Lithuania. The king loved pomp, luxury, splendour and feasts. In 1730, he impressed his subjects, ordering the Bakers’ Guild of Dresden to make a giant 1.7-tonne stollen, big enough for everyone to have a portion to eat. There were around 24,000 guests taking part in the festivities on the occasion of the legendary amusement festivity known as Zeithainer Lustlager. For this special occasion, the court architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann (1662–1737), built a particularly oversized stollen oven. An oversized stollen knife was also designed solely for this occasion. Stollen knife
Today, the festival takes place on the Saturday before the second Sunday in Advent, and the cake weighs between three and four tonnes. A carriage takes the cake in a parade through the streets of Dresden to the Christmas market, where it is ceremoniously cut into pieces and distributed among the crowd, in return for a small payment which goes to charity. A special knife, the Grand Dresden Stollen Knife, a silver-plated knife, long weighing , which is a copy of the lost baroque original knife from 1730, is used to cut the oversize stollen at the Dresden Christmas fair.
The largest stollen was baked in 2010 by Lidl; it was long and was certified by the Guinness Book of World Records, at the railway station of Haarlem.
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