Now it’s day three of the holiday stollen baking extravaganza!
After mixing the dough and letting it rise and rest, it is now time to bake the bread. As I mentioned yesterday, I might have been able to do this on the second day but I ran out of time. Here’s what you do when you are ready to the bake the bread.
Day Three: “Holiday Stollen” by Melissa Clark
If you refrigerated the dough overnight, take out of the refrigerator and let come to room temperature, about 1 to 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove plastic covering loaves and bake for about 1 hour. Loaves should look uniformly dark golden brown. As you might notice in the picture above, my loaves ended up a little darker than dark golden brown. I wasn’t too worried because of the vast quantities of butter involved.
While the bread is baking, whisk together 3/4 cup sugar and 2 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger.
When stollen is done, transfer top pan holding loaves to a wire rack (leave stollen on pan). While still hot, brush stollen with remaining 1 cup of melted butter, letting butter soak into loaves. Sprinkle ginger sugar on tops and sides of loaves.
When loaves are completely cool, cover loosely with waxed or parchment paper or foil and let sit at room temperature for 8 hours or overnight.
[...] bread wouldn’t rise at all after sitting in the refrigerator all night; hope that it would turn out ok; relief when it did; and finally, pride. I succeeded in making an edible, even delicious, holiday [...]