295177 Wed Dec 03 12:27:23 -0800 2003 14 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1621122 Hi Has anybody tried Martha Stewart's Stollen recipe? She and her mother made it on her show one time and it looked delicious. Problem is, that I tried it last year and because it yields such a large amount (four loaves) that I halved the recipe and it didn't turn out so well. Plus, I didn't follow the recipe to the letter and ended up trashing the final result. Thanks Wed Dec 03 12:27:23 -0800 2003 0 CPW 1 1621267 My Mom makes several loaves each Christmas. They freeze well, and we're eating them well into January. Thu Dec 04 11:43:21 -0800 2003 1621122 0 Sharuf 1 1621288 I've made Martha's mom's stollen for 2 years now (this will be the third). It's my third-favorite Christmas bread, after potica (Slavic cinamon rolled buttery yummy bread hard to find outside of places like Northern Minnesota -- I get my supply from some fine elderly ladies who still get together every year to roll it out, paper-thin, bigger than a dining room table and roll it once a year. I tell you those loaves are pure gold, and I treat them as such); and pannetone (my current favorite is Tres Marias). I've had stollens both purchased and homemade at other people's houses, but the best I've had (unlike potica, which I won't attempt) is the Martha recipe I made myself. Martha's mom is Polish (even though I think stollen is actually German in origin) and an old-school baker, and obviously "knows from stollen" :) One tiny suggestion,CPW, that I would venture is that NEVER mess with a baking recipe the first time you make it. Halving baking recipes is not like halving cooking recipes (like making a chicken dish for 4 into a chicken dish for 2). Unless it states specifically -- or I know from personal experience -- I don't halve or double any baking recipes. And if you "don't follow the recipe exactly" in baking, you are almost for-sure doomed to failure! I'm not sure how much baking you do -- you may be a pro who can do that sort of thing because of your experience, and if so, please forgive my preaching -- but if you don't bake all that often please remember that baking is NOT like cooking. Baking is exceeedingly exact, and often the more simple (though stollen has a long list of ingredients, it is essentially a simple bread) the recipe the more exact you must be. I wouldn't mess with Martha's recipe -- make the 4 loaves and freeze them. It freezes with no loss of flavor other than the oven aroma! And you can warm them, once defrosted, in the oven again, or toast them long after Christmas has come and gone. Let us know if you have another go at it!a Thu Dec 04 13:22:53 -0800 2003 1621122 0 Mrs. Smith 2 1621298 Thanks. Now I know it was me and not Martha! Thu Dec 04 14:23:51 -0800 2003 1621288 0 CPW 2 1621329 Mrs. Smith, given some of the most incredible baking projects that you have described on this board, I am quite certain that you could do potica without breaking a sweat. My grandmother and aunts and mother and even myself last year with my mother helping me, have all made potica for many years. It is time consuming, and we only make two rounds, one of which is frozen and eaten at Easter. Also, since there are quite a number of different ways to make it some of which may be more complicated than others, I don't know exactly what kind of potica you are used to. But I am quite sure that you are up to the challenge! Thu Dec 04 19:39:51 -0800 2003 1621288 0 Ann Vuletich 3 1621336 I second that. I know a lot of people who do it twice a year and turn out great results without being particularly good bakers. I have one aunt in her eighties who makes it every two weeks. She always has potica ready for you. Thu Dec 04 21:56:41 -0800 2003 1621329 0 wally 3 1621337 I think you could do it, too. :-) Thu Dec 04 23:05:56 -0800 2003 1621329 0 shoo-bee-doo 3 1621385 Thank you, Ann, for your kind words! I have never had potica in a round before. You are so lucky to have this fine tradition in your family, so you can learn how to make this most delicious of breads. Do you ever eat it with savory foods like cheese or meat? I have often known people on the "Iron Range" of Minnesota to eat this not-too-sweet but very rich bread with savory fillings for a sandwich. It's a traditional lunch after a neighborhood hockey game, or round of shoveling, or a snowball fight, etc. I used to think only of this wonderful confection as a sweet coffee or tea-type bread, but when tasting it with some fine ham or mellow cheese between it I thought I was going to collapse it was so good. The ladies I know who make potica roll it out about as thin as phyllo dough -- though it is an entirely different dough. They don't let anybody near the table who doesn't have lots of experience with this dough (read, at least in her 60s), since one bad roller can tear the dough and you have to start over! The filling of sugar and walnuts and butter and some things they won't tell me is pounded in a big pot by hand, with a large heavy peice of polished wood that looks like an oversized butter churn. The young-uns (women who want to learn, but who are not old enough or skilled enough yet) take turns pounding and sweating over the huge pot of walnuts. No mechanized shortcuts (even though I wonder if a food processor would help) are ever allowed -- and this is usually done in a church basement. The loaves -- very very heavy, about 4 inches in diameter by 2 1/2 inches high -- are then sold for astronomical prices for the benefit of the church. People gladly pay them. I've seen mining company executives come in their suits and overcoats and outbid each other up into the three figures when it gets near Christmas and the supply starts running low. The ladies are never ashamed to sell their potica for high prices (though deserving church members and young families with not much money always get their potica for 3-4$, ah, the benevolent double standard). There are also several sattelite home operations, with slight variations between them (usually the variation is amount of butter in the dough, and thickness of the layers, with strong opinions on either side) During Christmas time, whether you were of Slavic descent or not, you see real potica on everyone's cookie trays , and it's usually the first thing gone) -- and going to someone's house at Christmas and not being offered potica can sometimes cause a rift :) Those who don't make it buy, and often don't divulge their sources. We, a non-Slavic family who lived in Duluth (but my father worked often on the Range for the mining company, and was from there and consequently knew all the right ladies) were pitied by my father's friends, and we were given potica every year because there was no where we could obtain the real thing in our own town! I wouldn't attempt the potica I've seen without supervision for several loaves by an old pro. I've seen whole sheets feet long and wide be ruined by too much water or a misjudged roll. I'm not sure if everyone's potica is so tempermental. I have moved away to California now, and probably will never get a chance to learn. My mother, who still lives in Duluth, has never had any desire to learn how to roll potica -- I sure wish some of those ladies would have a weeklong potica school, or something! I'd sign up. We can both savor potica (I got my supply in mail yesterday!) this holiday season -- aren't we lucky? Fri Dec 05 14:10:42 -0800 2003 1621329 0 Mrs. Smith 4 1621418 How interesting! Yes, the potica that my family makes is rolled and then made into a round for baking. We have always eaten it either plain or usually topped with ham. I don't know where the ham tradition came from. My father's family is Croation. Both of his parents came to this country around 1910 and met in Southern Colorado where there was a Croatian community, many of whom worked in the coal mines. I don't know where the recipe (if even there was one) originally came from, but now you have my curiousity piqued and I will have to do some digging this Christmas. The ingredients and spicing that my aunts used did vary a bit -- I think one used raisins (I didn't care for those) -- but the basic dough and method and roll shape were the same. The dough isn't as thin (or as temperamental) as yours sounds like. I've looked for recipes on the internet and in cookbooks and have likewise found quite a variation. Mimi Sheraton, in her book on Christmas baking, has a little bit of history on this bread, and as I recall actually has a recipe for a potica and a nut roll which are a little different. But that is the only book, other than this great little spiral bound cookbook on Slavic cooking that I picked up at a yard sale when I was living in Omaha, in which I have ever seen potica recipes. I agree, though, the bread is wonderful. Eating it with ham I think is particularly good because of the saltiness of the ham. I've never had it with cheese. Fri Dec 05 18:22:32 -0800 2003 1621385 0 Ann Vuletich 5 1621422 I had heard that there was a Colorado connection here (my husband had actually seen this delight before, though he's not Slav at all, since he lived in Colorado for a few years). Is there any yeast in your dough? There seems to be a big difference in the raised and non-raised versions of the dough, and they would be treated very differently in rolling out. The bulk of the "church ladies" I've known making this (though not the only ones, just the ones I know) were ethnically Slovenian. Their dough has very very little yeast in it, and is butter-rich and quite heavy. It's not pyllo, but there are similarities in how it's handled, so perhaps it there was a Greek influence there at some point. I can imagine a lighter, yeast-raised dough wouldn't have to be so rolled as thinly. Interesting, there are no potica recipes I've ever seen that even remotely resemble the potica I grew up with. And the source, the church ladies, ain't talking. I've been told I'll be given a copy of the master recipe by an octogenarian friend of our family "When I die, and not before". She's going strong right now -- and I hope she does for many more years to come. I've never seen raisins in the filling of any potica, nor any variation from the favored nut -- walnuts. This recipe seems to be highly individual. I wish we could taste each other's potica and compare! (Oh and ham on potica is divine, I totally agree. My sisters particularly like fresh quark or, if they can't get it, cream cheese on potica also -- delicious!) Fri Dec 05 18:39:29 -0800 2003 1621418 0 Mrs. Smith 6 1621429 Yes, it's a yeast dough which likely explains the difference in thickness, etc. The dough is not real buttery but the bread when cooked is pretty filling -- not light like sandwich bread. The exterior gets painted with an egg wash, I think, which makes it glisten and a bit harder. The filling we use always has walnuts in it with different spices (cinnamon I recall being one of the dominant ones) mixed in. I lied before, I think I have had it with cream cheese also, though this was my doing not anything I ever had at a family Christmas, and it was quite good. But ham has got to be my favorite topping (unless I eat it plain) because it's traditional for us, and because we also have potica for Easter when we usually eat ham for Easter dinner. Those Solvenian church ladies crack me up! I know what some of the old Slav ladies who were friends of my grandmother were like (very tough!), so I can only imagine the ones who guard their potica like it's hidden treasure! Also, I recall that when I was subscribing to Bon Appetit (in my early years of food obsession, before the advertising turned it into a catalog and I realized that I had most of those recipes in books or elsewhere), that there was a small company and I want to say that it was located in the upper midwest, like Minnesota maybe, that sold poticas through the mail. I never ordered one of course, but it always intrigued me that someone was making a business out of selling these. Now through the internet there are a number of people doing the same thing, but at the time that was the only one I knew about. Fri Dec 05 19:08:55 -0800 2003 1621422 0 Ann Vuletich 7 1621433 Very interesting thread. Thanks to both of you. My grandparents on my father's side are Czech but my grandmother was never much of a cook. All of our Czech recipes come from some refugees my grandparents sponsored in the early '80s (and subsequently shipped to my parents.) The only Slavic lore I can contribute is that my grandmother once hit a customs officer who tried to take away the bottle of goose fat she always traveled with. My grandfather told the customs officer (in English) that she was tipsy and he let her go. Fri Dec 05 20:28:15 -0800 2003 1621429 0 JudiAU 4 1621447 Here are some odd bits of potica information and a few questions. I lived in Slovenia for several years and potica was most always made into a round. Sometimes it was put into a kugel cake pan. Most potica I had there had raisins and the bread part and the walnut part were thicker than I've had anywhere. In Slovenia, I also had a tarragon potica that was out of this world I'm also from the Iron Range and my mother made it snail style. We used to have 80+ year old Slovenian and Serbian ladies from Nashwauk and Keewatin make our potica every year. (My mother's was the backup.) These ladies have all died and we usually get 2nd rate potica now from 2nd and 3rd generation Slovenians. It just isn't like it used to be. On the Iron Range, the Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian ladies would each have their different style potica. We always had discussions about which was best. The Serbian style was more like a strudel. The Slovenian was a little thicker. The Croatian style was somewhere in between. Eating potica with something savory was wonderful. Butter and ham was my favorite. Also, we had it for Christmas breakfast with scrambled eggs. A friend (originally from the Iron Range) just recently pointed out that there is a potica recipe in the original Betty Crocker cookbook. Her family always used that recipe. Another friend's mother used to make cottage cheese potica, which was excellent also. Mrs. Smith, where are these church ladies in Duluth that make this fine potica? I pass through Duluth on my way to the Range cities several times a year. I would like to find them. Here's a link to some adequate potica from a bakery in Hibbing MN. It's a little too sweet for my tastes, but I use it when I can get no other. Link: http://www.sunrisebakery.com/sunrisepoticastore/favorites.html Fri Dec 05 23:02:34 -0800 2003 1621385 0 shoo-bee-doo 5 1621701 Hi Shoo be doo! Alas, the ladies I referred to in my post were in Chisholm, and other Iron Range towns. I only wish they were in Duluth! I have heard about the differences between, Serbian, Croation, and Slovenian potica. The variations, some of which you describe, seem endless and all sound so delicious :) I, too, have had the Sunrise Bakery potica. You're right, it's definitely too sweet (more like coffee-cake sweet), but it's what my mother gets for me (they even sell a few loaves at Cub in Duluth now) when there is no other potica to be had. The Serbian Orthodox ladies I knew in Duluth never made potica, for some strange reason. We may have had the same potica from the same 80+ ladies in the past! One of them was Veda Ponikvar and her gang. Boy could they make fine fine potica -- though I know that there were many groups making excellent old-fashioned potica at the same time. You are so right -- it isn't like it used to be. So many of those fine old bakers have gone, alas, taking their secrets with them. Mon Dec 08 13:01:16 -0800 2003 1621447 0 Mrs. Smith 1 1621300 just remember that stollen can be tricky and take a LONG time to rise, with that big load or sugar, eggs, fruits and alcohol (if you include it) In terms of flavor, that long rise is good, though. Thu Dec 04 14:40:04 -0800 2003 1621122 0 jen kalb