Stefan likes the marzipan stollen best, so he gets a few more pieces right away. His mother, elke lanzerath, is enthusiastic about the stollen with cranberries and chocolate icing and gerhard dalke rather agrees with stefan. "The marzipan stollen is juicy as it is. But actually they all taste very good." On prepared slips of paper, the tasters who have come to the tageblatt office for the public stollen test give their verdict.
Manfred stiefel from the institute for quality assurance of bakery products examines the christmas treats from a professional point of view. "Five bakers from the city and the district voluntarily take part in this quality assessment", he explains. His criteria are strict. Manfred stiefel first takes a look at the beautiful appearance of the stollen. He judges the surface and crust properties, how loose the baked product is, how the crumbs look, the structure and the elasticity – all things that the layman can only perceive to a limited extent. For the stollenprufer of the strabe are above all taste and possibly still the smell decisive. "But these are also the decisive criteria for me", says the expert.
While he is talking, a tageblatt reader comes up to the tasting table and is delighted to receive a poppy seed cake. "I know this from home in the sudetenland", she said and told him that the dough was mainly used to bake poppy seed strudels, for which several plaits were braided and stacked on top of each other. Another customer is in a hurry, doesn’t even fill out a slip of paper, but just tries it out. "I have to take a stollen to saarland; it should be particularly good." She quickly found her favorite and asks manfred stiefel about the baker.
The tasting is over at 1 p.M. Four of the participating bakers come to talk to the expert about the results of his examination. By the way, they not only had their stollen tested, but they also brought gingerbread with them. But manfred stiefel did not get around to it yesterday. He will submit the result later. And this is his assessment of the stollen: the five backers had provided him with 31 samples. 14 are rated "very good" and 14 "good" ratings. Only two stollen were rated "satisfactory" by manfred stiefel.
What motivates the backers to subject their products to such rigorous testing?? "Of course, everyone would like to have a confirmation that they have baked a very good stollen. But we are also grateful when faults are pointed out to us so that we can correct them", says master baker rainer reibenweber.