Kitchen Gadget 11. Non-stick Sheets

A long time ago, back when this Kitchen Gadgets series was in its infancy, we talked about pizza. We mentioned in passing that we use non-stick sheets to stop our pizza sticking to its baking tray. It might have been a fleeting reference but the truth is that we have a growing collection of these sheets and we love them. We use them nigh on constantly.

You might then ask why it has taken us so long to give them a post of their own. The truth is that we use them in so many small little ways that it's been hard to think of a recipe to give you that highlights just how useful they are.

You see we baked biscuits on them and popped one in our roasting tin for sweet buns. We've used them for breadsticks and for collecting fresh pasta. The more I looked them more I saw them lurking in the background of bake after bake, blog post after blog post, they are the unsung heroes in our kitchen.

So, here's just one more recipe that we use a non-stick sheet for: Stollen.

Stollen
This is Joe's modified version of Delia's stollen recipe. We use our bread machine to make the dough and then plait the stollen and marzipan into three strands as this disperses the marzipan throughout the stollen - not just in the middle. Unorthodox, but tasty!

7g Dried Yeast
350g Strong White Bread Flour
50g Caster Sugar
1/4tsp Salt
110g Butter
1 Egg
150ml Milk
Zest of 1/2 Lemon

200g Dried Fruit and Nuts, approximately (use what you have around):
 - 100g Sultanas
 - 25g Glace Cherries
 - 25g Mixed Peel
 - 25g Apricots
 - 25g Flaked Almonds

200g Marzipan


1. Put all the ingredients, minus the fruit/nuts and the marzipan, in a bread machine on a dough cycle. Once finished mix in the fruit/nuts.

2. Split the dough into three equal pieces and then roll these into three sausages of equal length and thicknesses.

3. Flatten the sausages and tweak if needed to make them the same.

4. Roll out lengths of marzipan approximately a fingers width in diameter and lay them along your dough stopping 5cm short of each end.

5. Wrap each length of dough around the marzipan to re-form them into sausages.

6. Plait the three strands taking care not to stretch the dough as you do so (it will want to stretch!). Once you've finished plaiting tuck the ends of the plait under and transfer to baking sheet lined with a non-stick sheet.

Ours turned out to be a little long for the tray...

7. Leave to rise again (until doubled in size if you can be that patient).

8. Bake at 170C fan for around 30mins or until the top is golden and the bread sounds cooked (hollow when tapped - normal bread making rules apply).

9. Transfer the stollen on its non-stick sheet to a wire rack and allow to cool.

10. Once cool turn over and the sheet should just peel away.

11. Enjoy with a cup of tea!