Low Fat Vegan Cooking

Stollen - Cherry Whole Wheat Sweet Bread

My friend Heidi was thinking about having Stollen for New Year’s Day, so i decided to post this, even though to me Stollen is a Christmas bread, and i was planning to post this in early December of next year. So Heidi, this is for you, and i hope it will start a new tradition of New Year’s Stollen. Or… how about spring Stollen?

My mother has made Stollen for Christmas morning as far back as i can remember. She made it with candied cherries, and later, i made it with candied cherries and dried apricots. This year i thought i would try it with less sugar, and made it with thawed frozen sugarless cherries. It was great!

As a friend reminded me, kneading is hard when you haven’t done it before. It gets easier, and then you, or at least i forget that it was ever hard. But you have to knead bread regularly before you develop the right muscles. Don’t let this deter you. The bread will be worth it. I used to make bread about every week, but now i only make it about once a month, but i can still knead it, although not as easily as when I did it all the time.

My mother says:

“For many years, I have kneaded bread on the floor — on a bread
board, placed on towels. I started doing this when my children were
small so they could watch and participate. I would give the child a
small piece of dough to knead, but periodically I would switch the
child’s piece with a new piece broken off of the big mass I was
kneading and work the child’s old one into the big mass, so it ended
being well kneaded. In later years I continued kneading on the floor
so I could kneel over the board and put my whole weight behind the
kneading. Now I think I would get too tired, or not knead it with
the “force” necessary, if it wasn’t on the floor for me to bend over it!

I actually did many other cooking procedures on the floor so the
young child could easily watch and participate.”

I decorated the stollen with raspberries and basil leaves. The bread inside is a brownish red, like Georgia’s soil.

Stollen

Makes about 12 servings
Preparation about 25 minutes
Freezes okay
Best served the day it’s made, but it can be made ahead – you might want to decorate it just before serving

½ c. warm water – 108 degrees
1 package active yeast
¾ c. vegan milk
½ c. sugar
½ t. salt
1 c. fresh or frozen cherries
4 c. whole wheat pastry flour

Be sure to have the flour at room temperature, if you refrigerate your flours. Warm the water and the vegan milk. On my stove, this takes about 1 ½ minutes. If you get either too hot, measure out half of it and mix with cold water or vegan milk, depending on which you are cooling. Warm the cherries, too, if they are cold. Stir the yeast into the warm water and let bubble about 10 minutes.

Mix the sugar and salt into the yeast mixture. Add the cherries. Add the flour and mix well. I usually use my Kitchen Aid mixer to mix bread instead of kneading it. If you are going to knead the bread, put it on a floured board. Knead about 10 minutes.

My mother told me that at this point you can refrigerate the dough over night, so you can have fresh bread for breakfast. I haven’t tried it, but she is always right. Take it out when you first get up, and put it on or in a pan, as directed below, and let it rise – probably about an hour and a half, since it was cold.

Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper, and form the bread into a loaf, and cover it with a damp cloth. Or you could use a loaf pan, but then you need to oil it. Put the bread dough in a warm place. I put it next to the stove, if i’m using it, or the heater, in the winter. In the summer i put it outside or in a room where the insulation isn’t as good, and it gets hot. Bread will rise if it is cooler, but it rises slowly. In a 70 degree room, it usually rises in an hour to double.

When the bread is almost doubled, preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Bake 30 to 40 minutes, until the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it and is browner than the dough was.

When cool ice with:

2 c. powdered sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
1 T. vegan milk
Green or red food coloring for Christmas, if desired

Decorate with cherries, or raspberries, holly leaves or basil leaves, or flowers, or whatever your heart dictates.

Keeps a couple of days, but is best the first day, or frozen until a couple of hours before serving – depending on how large the loaf is, or whether it is sliced.

Nutritional information- not guaranteed to be accurate:
Per serving – 259 calories/6.3 g protein (9.7%)/1.1 g fat (3.8%)