How a stollen recipe once made for Swedish royalty became a local sensation and is now in the hands of a Newfoundland-born Vancouver pastry chef
The legendary Four Seasons stollen lives on at the new Best Kind Bakeshop and beyond
You know Christmas is coming when the famous “Four Seasons stollen” comes to Vancouver, here from the new Best Kind Bakeshop.
EVERY YEAR AT this time, Vancouver becomes a little obsessed with stollen, the classic German Christmas bread studded with rum-soaked raisins and sprinkled with white sugar. There’s one version in particular that gets people here ravenously excited. This legendary loaf has gone from Swedish royalty to a local pastry chef born in Newfoundland who just launched a virtual bakery.
The story starts with Bieben native Gerhard Weitzel, 78, a former Waldorf Astoria Hotel pastry chef who worked at the now defunct Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver. From 1991 to the Four Seasons’ closing at the beginning of this year, Weitzel made up to 900 buttery loaves every holiday season. The hotel couldn’t keep it in stock.
Weitzel acquired the somewhat closely guarded recipe from a friend in Germany, a former pastry chef for the King of Sweden. Yielding 80 loaves, the recipe calls for 6.6 pounds of butter for the marzipan centre alone and another 10 pounds of butter for the dough, along with 12 pounds of golden raisins, two bottles of rum, and the zest of 25 oranges and 25 lemons.
When the Howe Street hotel shuttered in early 2020, there was some minor panic among discerning local sweet tooths over the prospect of no longer being able to get their hands on the rapturous holiday staple.
Weitzel wasn’t about to let that happen. He divulged that he had previously shared the recipe with a good friend, legendary local chef and chocolatier Thomas Haas, who continues to make stollen every season.
Now, that same recipe is in the capable hands of another friend, Mark Burton.
Pastry chef Mark Burton.
The founder of the newly launched Best Kind Bakeshop, an online bakery that bakes to order, Burton was born in the town of Burin on the southern shore of Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula, about four hours outside of St. Johns. He got his start in the food industry there then ended up taking what he thought was going to be a summer job at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. He stayed for 15 years.
Upon moving to Vancouver in 2007, Burton worked at Fairmont Hotel Vancouver and Rosewood Hotel Georgia, among other places, before eventually taking the role of executive pastry chef at the Four Seasons—where he met “an awesome team which included the stollen king himself, Gerhard Weitzel”, he tells Stir.
From there, Burton moved to the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, where he was an instructor then the program director for culinary and pastry arts. “Unfortunately, the pandemic occurred and our industry was and still is thrown into disarray, and as a result I lost my job,” he says.
So Best Kind Bakeshop was born. The name has a special significance for Burton. “In Newfoundland the saying ‘best kind’ can mean a lot of different things,” he explains. “Generally, it’s something you think is awesome or really approve of--it’s the best of its kind. Newfoundlanders are a very busy bunch so we shortened it to ‘best kind’. ‘Gotta get a croissant, they’re best kind.’ Or it can even refer to a feeling: ‘How ya getting on? Best kind, never been better.’”
To cut down on food waste, minimize packaging, and offer the freshest possible products, Burton bakes to order, with pickups on Tuesdays and Fridays in East Van (150 - 1507 Powell Street). Conveniently, pickups take place right next door to a brewery, which makes it all the more enticing for people to travel there for orders.
Back to the stollen. The plan was for Weitzel to join Burton in baking this year’s batch, but the two are still determining whether this is possible given pandemic safety protocols. Nonetheless, Weitzel has given Burton his blessing to re-create the bread and to carry on the tradition of the famous Four Seasons Christmas stollen.
“It has history and charm and is something very special that people anticipate and wait for, which can be rare these days,” Burton says. “Making the stollen is truly ‘slow food’, in total a three-day process that involves care and attention, which I find so important. It’s important to not let things like this slip away for convenience, to show respect to the ingredients and the people who turn the ingredients into the special things.
“I learned that Gerhard had retired [over a decade ago] but stayed on part-time so he could make stollen over the festive season, so I knew that this was something that there was an amazing amount of pride and care in, and it shows,” he says. “The recipe lends itself to being a mix of intuition and an actual recipe, something that comes with making it a few hundred times, and it takes a lot of practice and patience.”
The frames used to bake the stollen in at the Four Seasons were thought to be lost in the closing of the hotel. “The frames had been used by Gerhard for over 30 years and were as much of the stollen as butter and sugar,” Burton says. “Through a lot of phone calls and some detective work by Gerhard himself, he located 28 of the original frames that I am very happy to be able to use this year. I will make the stollen according to Gerhard’s recipe, in the original frames.”
Stollen will be available at Best Kind Bakery for $22 as of November 27. Burton also makes a range of sourdough breads, baguettes, croissants, cookies, and other artisanal goods. (For Movember, he made croissants in the shape of mustachios.)
Besides at Thomas Haas Chocolates, here are a few other spots where you can find stollen—or stollen-inspired treats—this season.
Forage.
Forage
Forage restaurant’s pastry chef Michael Sonsmann uses a traditional recipe for this old-world bread. It’s available for $24.95 via the new Forage Online Shop, featuring gorgeous local gourmet food items like a sourdough starter kit, infused honey, spice mixes and rubs, flavoured sea salts, hot sauce, and more.
Elmo Baking Co.
Elmo Baking Co.
Elmo Pinpin, who was born in Manila and raised in Jakarta, moved to Vancouver in 2000 and has been working in the food and restaurant industry since 2002. He was a pastry chef at Blue Water Café, Delta Grand Okanagan, and Thomas Haas Chocolates before branching out on his own with his virtual shop, Elmo Baking Co. Pickups can be made daily at its commissary kitchen in Richmond from Wednesday to Friday, or on Saturdays there and in Vancouver, New Westminster, Port Moody,
While his time living in Southeast Asia influences his products (think croissants in flavours like ube, black sesame, and matcha), his Stollen Croissant was born out of his time with Haas. “He taught me to make his signature traditional Christmas stollen, and I wanted to pay homage to that in my own unique way,” Pinpin says.
Temper Chocolate and Pastry
Temper Chocolate and Pastry
Pastry chef Steven Hodge, whose CV includes roles at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, Gordon Ramsay’s Royal Hospital Road, Glowbal Group, and Thomas Haas Chocolates, is making sugar-dusted Christmas Stollen ($25 for small, $35 for large) at his West Vancouver shop.
PICA.
Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts
It’s an Austrian version of Christmas stollen at PICA ($23). Made with candied fruits and toasted almonds macerated in dark aged rum and a milk polish, the finished product brushed with clarified butter and tossed in vanilla sugar.
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