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Christmas Stollen
By Jeff Becker Photography by Marty Snortum Studio
 For too long, fruitcakes got a bad rap. Johnny Carson once joked that there is really only one fruitcake in the world, passed from family to family during the holidays. It is true that Americans are behind the curve on fruitcake preparation, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Christmas stollen, available this holiday season at Greenery Market, is one alternative. When one gives the gift of fruitcake, he is honoring a long and storied tradition that harks back to many a Christmas past.
According to Food Timeline, an award-winning research website run by research librarian Lynne Olver, stollen and other fruit breads hail back to Medieval Europe. In those days, breads like these were expensive, so people saved them for the holiday season (much like an orange in the stocking used to serve as a valuable gift to a grateful child). Typically, they were made with the best ingredients, like fine wheat flours. Though it evolved through the years, stollen is typically a yeast bread, filled with dried fruits, nuts, candied citrus peel and sometimes marzipan. It is finished with a good dusting of powdered sugar and the end result is pleasing to the eye, as well as the tooth.
Traditionally from Germany, stollen literally means tunnel. It earned this name because the bread, baked in an oblong shape, resembles the entrance to a mine tunnel. However some reports credit the shape of stollen to be a supposed representation of the Nativity, hence Christstollen. There are a number of Old World breads that stem from tradition to mimic biblical scenes and imagery (like pretzels, which are supposed to symbolize the bindings of Jesus). In Germany, stollen is usually eaten at Christmas time. With large fairs to mark the occasion (much in the way we have parades and other events to commemorate the 4th of July) German cuisine flourishes in this holiday to provide culinary delights, like stollen.
Greenery Market pays homage to this classic bread each year by baking stollen and other holiday favorites. The breads are prepared with high-quality ingredients and the dried fruits and nuts add a nice texture and flavor to the sugary bread. If you have a fruit-cake-hater on your gift list, this is the bread to change their mind, or yours.
Stollen can be found at Greenery Restaurant and Market inside Sunland Park Mall in El Paso. For more information, call (915) 584-6706.
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