Baking Stollen
The first Advent never comes as a surprise to me. But this year, the old Stollen recipe appears on my laptop screen. I had already taken over the traditional Pfefferkuchen years ago – the honey dough is difficult to knead and they are easy to transport without the risk of breakage. But the Stollen was different. The Stollen was the pride of the family, the recipe that had been preserved for generations, even though the ingredients were hard to come by during the world wars – if at all.
Baking Stollen is an adventure anyway. You only bake Stollen once a year. Oven-red, unevenly baked, spread – it doesn’t matter. It’s always better than any store-bought Stollen.
My memories of baking Stollen during Advent are full of wonder. Back then, I remember baking countless Stollen for home and to send to the rest of the family. On baking day, around the first Advent, the ingredients, with the Stollen boards, were placed on a wooden trolley, which was pulled through the snow-covered suburban streets of the city to another suburb, usually after dark. We trudged through the snow for about an hour under illuminated windows.
The Stollen were baked by the baker using the people’s ingredients and their recipe. In my childhood memories, in the lamplight of the large, sweltering bakery, huge journeymen in white trousers and vests would pour the ingredients into a kneading machine, others would push moulded Stollen with long wooden bread pans into the embers of the semi-circular maw of an equally huge oven and close a black metal oven door with a latch behind them, or take brown baked Stollen out of other ovens, balance them on the Stollen boards lying ready and shout out the name of the order. Above it all, the bakers’ shouted comments. There were benches along the walls for those waiting for their Stollen. Once the ingredients had been delivered, the long wait began. I was sent out into the yard to play. Snow, old farming tools, countless dark doors, yellowish lamps competing with the moonlight on the snow. From time to time, I looked into the bakery window and watched the giant bakers for a moment. Finally, the Stollen were pulled home on planks in the same trolley along the same route through the winter night. It’s hard to imagine that it was actually night, but in my memory, it was deep night — snow crunching under my boots and all other sounds muffled under the incessantly falling flakes. The planks went into the old kitchen under the roof and were covered finger-thick with melted butter, icing sugar and granulated sugar to make a heavenly crust. Simply dusting them with icing sugar, as they do today at the bakery, was not an option. Then you had to wait until the Stollen could be cut for Christmas and the gingerbread cakes had softened in the earthenware pot. In the meantime, biscuits were baked and fortunately eaten straight away.
It has long since ceased to be the case that bakers use the ingredients provided by their customers, who wait in the bakery. The kitchen oven must do the job.
It’s not just a family recipe, but memories: every first Sunday of Advent is a bridge between past and present. The kitchen still smells the same, but the hands that do the work are different. I have learned that some traditions can survive even when the memories of them fade. And where they don’t, you have to live with the change. So now for the baking …
To all those who keep family traditions alive. Preserving memories is important. Happy Advent.