Bakers and engineers work together on the production of the Dresden giant stollen

In addition to bakers, engineers were also involved in the production of the Dresden giant stollen this year. "They also like to eat stollen. We asked them if they could build us a model for a giant stollen," master baker Karsten Liebscher told the German Press Agency at the Dresden trade fair on Sunday. There, 30 bakers had met early in the morning to make the XXL Striezel. The more than 3,000 pieces of the stollen are to be sold at the Stollen Festival in Dresden next Saturday (9 December).

The giant stollen is made up of countless individual pieces. According to Liebscher, a model printed using a 3D printer made it easier for the bakers to start production on Sunday. "We knew exactly how many pieces we had to cut and where they had to go." Nevertheless, it takes at least six hours to make the stollen. In the final step, the pastry is sprinkled with powdered sugar.

The giant version of the traditional yeast dough pastry should weigh around 1.8 tons in the end, Liebscher said. Compared to previous years, this year's is rather light. "We've had heavier stollen before. But we don't want to keep getting bigger and heavier, we want to offer better and better quality," said the master baker.

The bakers had already baked around 270 stollen slabs three weeks earlier, which have now been used to make the giant stollen. "The slabs are 60 by 40 centimetres in size. They are pre-cut into twelve pieces."

At the Stollen Festival, the so-called bricks will cost ten euros each. "They weigh a good pound, a good 500 grams."