The Christstollen Affair

   

Christmas rolled around this year, and it so happened that  I had newly begun dating someone, so then the question arose of what is the proper gift etiquette for such a situation. It was new enough where anything too personal like home decor or mushy, romantic gifts would be inappropropriate, but also new enough that giving a meaningless object or a gift card would be too impersonal. Impersonal was definitely not the message that I wanted to send since I enjoyed going out on dates and conversing with this person. To give nothing seemed like a faux pas as well. It screamed disinterest which is not good messages to send while dating someone who actually peaks one’s interest. After pondering this question for awhile, I went to the all-knowing sage, my mom. Her response was, “Shit, I don’t know.” I do appreciate her tid bits of wisdom. After a long pause where sparks collided in the sage’s mind and auras converged, she responded in a deeply-knowing oracle voice that echoed with magical knowledge, “Why don’t you bake him something? All men like food.” Once again, her infinite wisdom rang through the silence, and I knew it to be true. I remembered that he had told me he went to Germany on exchange as a young man, and I had seen a German game in his house, so those two facts were enough for me to determine that I needed to bake something German. I researched for a few minutes and found Germany’s treasured Christmas treat: Christstollen (stollen for short). Upon reading about this bread, I realized that this was no simple task; the recipe specified that the ingredients such as candied citrus peel had to be made by hand days in advance of making the bread. The marzipan had to also be made by hand; store bought would not suffice  The flour had to be milled in an old fashioned mill by a Danish maid (Safeway would have to do), and I had to choose oranges and lemons from the mythical land of  Organic. All ingredients had to be pure, so no imitation almond extract or vanilla, and spices such as ground cardamom(a.k.a. money in a jar) and mace were required. Along this vein, I made sure that I bought high quality dark rum from Puerto Rico. The recipe could not be marred by cheap alcohol.  I could not help thinking that this bread held some sort of pure- bred pedigree in bread land. There were also ingredients like rose water that I had never seen on the grocery store shelf in all my years of grocery shopping, of course, I had never looked. Luckily, I was in Humboldt, and Humboldt carries all things strange or exotic. My search for the ingredients spanned three stores and two towns. As I was searching for my fruits from the Island of Organic, I overheard a woman talking to someone and saying quite matter-of-factly, “Well, if she is gonna eat at my house, she is not getting organic.” This solidified in my mind that the bread truly was not a run of the mill bread, and I had visions of the cute guy I was dating relishing every single bite of the hierarchically advantaged loaf. 

    At home that evening, I began the process of candying citrus peel. Then I let the peel dry for one and a half days. The next day I made the homemade marzipan which shockingly was very easy. I doubled the recipe because I wanted to make a loaf for my family as well. On the second batch, I ran out of the pure almond extract. I had a long discussion with my sage, and she indicated that imitation would do, and that the family would eat the “unpure” bread. I did not like this idea of my family not getting the “real deal,” but acquiesced because the thought of going to the grocery store and manuevering through bodies dressed in Santa hats, and holly covered leggings with Christmas lights strung around their necks really did not sound appealing, so I sacriligiously, measured out the subpar imitation almond extract into the second batch of marzipan. I felt a part of my heart die in that instance. Here I was giving my family second best when they deserved only the very finest. I felt that for a split second. Upon tasting the two batches of marzipan, the only difference in taste was the psychological knowledge that one was slighting my family and one was made from the finest ingredients.

    The evening of the actual bread making came. It had been a full day; I had attended two exercise classes that day on top of a slough of other activities, so I was a bit tired. I started my loaf, soaking the fruits and nuts in the rum while mixing the dough. About midway through this process, I began receiving texts from the cute guy to whom the bread was intended. I would add an ingredient, pause for a few minutes to fully take in his eloquent texts and devise an equally eloquent text to match his. Stop and go. Text then measure is how the process of dough making went. When I had prepared my dough for the first rising, I started on the second loaf for my family, all the while maintaining the texting conversation. Just when I finished the second dough for its raising, I realized that in my distraction and flirtatious texts, I had misread the recipe. I had used egg whites instead of egg yolks. The distress was real. It was too late to turn back and start all over again; once again, I had marred the purity of the bread. My texts to the cute guy turned to a lamented of how I had messed up the bread(He had no idea the bread was actually for him), and he assured me that the bread might be different than the original recipe, but that it would not ruin it; he then sent me encouraging and optimisitic aphorisms, and even suggested that perhaps I had made the bread superior to the original recipe with my mistake. I really liked this guy. After the first rising of the first loaf, I was required to punch the dough down and add my rum soaked fruit and nuts. At that point I was instructed to separate the dough into two loaves. It was then that I realized that the recipe already made two loaves, and that I had completely overdone it with my second batch. I would be making four loaves instead of two, and I was exhausted. This endeavor was taking many unintended turns. Stollen had taken control! I had also doubled my waiting time with my doubling stollen frenzy when all I wanted was to go to sleep. 

Around 12 a.m., I was still waiting for my doughs to rise. My sagacious mom looked at me with my eyes half closed and my baking-beaten body dragging, and said very seriously, “I was going to go to bed, but I am really afraid you are going to burn the house down.” I had demonstrated forgetfullness several times that night: leaving the marzipan in the refrigerator, the egg white debacle, preheating the oven at the inappropriate time, not reading the recipe and making four loaves instead of two. Her concern was legitimate. As the night progressed, I saw her carefully watching me to make sure that my eyelids did not fully close. I fought to keep my eyes open, to keep my body from falling into slumber; it was a battle to the last. 1 a.m. rolled around, and I had just pulled the second loaf from the oven. Now, I had to wait for them to cool before I could cover them in powdered sugar. Around 2 a.m. I finished powdering the last of the four loaves, wrapped them up tightly in plastic wrap and foil, and staggered to bed. I woke up two times that night reassuring myself, “The bread is done”, sighing and contentedly falling back asleep.

 I had defeated the stollen, but it had defeated me too. All attempts at perfection had been lost along the way, but in the end, a perfectly delicious, hybrid, Tamara-style stollen had been created (actually four of them), and the cute guy’s kind words rang true, the egg whites had made the bread different and wonderful. 

UPDATE!!!

The cute guy dissipated into the oblivion of insignificant memory, and I never found out if he enjoyed  the loaf; however, my family who received the majority of the loaves waited the two to three weeks that the recipe had indicated before eating the bread. They reported that when  placing the Christmas loaves to their lips, they were transported to a sort of holiday heaven.