I used the recipe from my cookbook Christmas: a Cook's Tour. It came together easily enough, but the dough felt dense and heavy. I added more water, which helped, but suspected it still was the wrong texture. After 5 hours rising in a warm oven with barely a budge, I made up a plain water and flour dough from about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of flour and a little more yeast and kneaded it into the dough until it felt right. That allowed the dough to rise properly, but it was very soft and loose and made the braid difficult. (This is supposed to be a round loaf, but I wanted something more decorative.)
I thought it had over proved the second time because I didn't turn on the oven until the loaf already looked plenty large, but the crumb looked okay. The loaf was too large, soft, and heavy to rap on the bottom after it looked baked enough (it started to break), so I used a thermometer. I read that enriched breads need to bake to a higher temperature, 200 degrees; that brought the loaf to a darker crust than I would have liked. And as it turned out, the bread was very dry.
It was still very good with a nice buttery flavor. It was too sweet to glaze, as I had originally intended, but was very good with just a light spread of salted butter. I used golden raisins and half candied lemon peel/half candied red cherries chopped small. I would eliminate the lemon peel, simply because it turned it from cardamom bread to something almost identical to stöllen. (However, I don't know that I would increase the cherries to make up the difference. If I did, I think I would reduce the sugar slightly.)
Conclusion: Delicious, but not far enough from my stöllen.
Recipe: Julekake via Christmas: a Cook's Tour
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