DURHAM -- The 2003 Christmas season has been one the folks at Guglhupf Bakery & Patisserie won't soon forget. All month, owners Claudia Cooper and Hartmut Jahn and their staff have been working around-the-clock baking and mailing German Christmas stollen in response to a boom in demand created by a segment aired on the Food Network in December. "Ever since we've been on TV, we've been out of control," Cooper said. The Durham bakery didn't know the publicity was coming for its holiday bread until it was far too late to be fully manageable. Office manager Christine Taylor was surfing the Food Network's Web site after Thanksgiving looking for leftover turkey ideas when she discovered that a ''Food Finds'' show profiling Guglhupf that was filmed in August 2002 would be airing eight times in December, starting Dec. 9. "They never told us," Cooper said, sighing. The producers had warned her that when the piece eventually ran, the bakery would receive "a gazillion phone calls" and several million hits on its Web site, and Cooper and Jahn quickly realized they needed to set up a mail-order business to ship their stollen around the country. "We recruited family, parents," Cooper said. The only requirements for taking phone orders were a pulse and the ability to speak and understand English, she said. In the two weeks since the first airing, Guglhupf has shipped 1,200 stollen all over the country for $22.50 each -- $13.95 for the bread and $8.55 for shipping and handling. "The first day we shipped 26, and we thought that was exciting," Taylor said. Business also has doubled at Guglhupf's bakery and retail outlet at 2706 Chapel Hill Blvd. The building's newly paved parking lot was full of cars Wednesday morning, with engines idling while drivers waited for spots to open. One customer joked about the crowd as she returned to her car. "I could sell mine on the black market for three times what I paid," she said. German families celebrate the four Sundays of Advent with stollen, a leavened bread made with a sweet yeast dough, citrus peel, raisins, almonds and spices, Cooper said. After baking, the bread is coated in butter and rolled in powdered sugar. Every baker has his own favorite variety of stollen -- which began in Germany 700 years ago -- and Cooper isn't sure of the origins of Guglhupf's version. The recipe has evolved over time as the bakers tweaked it to make it work with American ingredients. "Over the five years we've done it, it's a true trade secret," she said. And it's drawing a crowd. Two dozen people spilled out of the bakery's door and onto its new patio Wednesday morning, waiting for stollen and Guglhupf's other baked goods. "It's very authentic -- as good or better than you get in the old country," said Bob Vallery, a Raleigh resident who was born in Germany. Vallery used to order his Christmas stollen from Dinkel's Bakery, a Chicago institution, but he's been driving to Guglhupf since it opened in 1998. "They have the best German breads," he said. "People come from all over." Back in the kitchen At this point, Cooper doesn't know how many employees she has packaging and selling the store's products. While normally Guglhupf has 20 to 22 staff members, about 30 people are lending a hand now. It's amazing how the staff has pulled together, working 10- to 12-hour shifts, she said. "We've held up, but we're tired," she said Wednesday morning. "At 5:00 we're going to lock that door and keel over." But never fear. Guglhupf will open again on Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The bakery might even be making more stollen after New Year's, an unprecedented move, Taylor said. She asked customers not to inquire about it until then. Along with Cooper's exhaustion is excitement about what the past several weeks have brought. "It's been an awesome opportunity to ship all over the place," she said. "We're really psyched." While many of Guglhupf's orders for stollen have been placed on its Web site, the bakery also has received numerous phone calls from older women excited to describe their family history and their link to Germany, Cooper said. With the phone ringing off the hook -- and call waiting beeping in her ear -- that's been an exercise in patience, she said. All of the bakery's callers also have been sure to let staff know that they saw the episode on the Food Network. "Who didn't?" she said. Cooper doesn't fault ''Food Finds'' for not letting her know the show would be airing. "It's Hollywood -- they play so big, and we're so little," she said. The other businesses profiled probably already had mailing services in place, she said. Guglhupf's relationship with Food Network has been a series of short-notice situations. Cookbook author and Chapel Hill resident Jean Anderson told the network about Guglhupf's stollen, and producers from ''Food Finds'' called Cooper and Jahn in June 2002 asking for a media kit and samples of their Christmas goods. First Cooper had to find out what a media kit was, she said, then she had to make the out-of-season samples to mail to California. In August 2002, the show called and said it planned on coming two days later to film the segment. By the way, the TV people said, the store should be decorated as though it was Christmastime. So Cooper and Jahn dug up artificial evergreen wreaths and recruited customers to wear winter clothes for the shooting. "Of course it was 100 degrees out," Cooper said. "What you've got to do is what you've got to do." Throughout the stollen craze, construction on Guglhupf's café and lounge next door has continued. The addition, which is slated to open in early spring, continues to change and develop as it is built, she said. Next year, Guglhupf plans on baking its stollen between September and Thanksgiving, devoting December solely to baking cookies and shipping the Christmas bread. Like wine or cheese, stollen actually gets better with age, Cooper said, and it will keep up to two years in the freezer. Because demand this year caught Cooper and Jahn by surprise, they had to limit their shipping this year only to large stollen. Next year, they plan to expand their capabilities to include small stollen, Christmas cookies and a variety of other products. Despite the staff's efforts, Guglhupf still ran out of its large stollen before Christmas Eve this year. "You have to pool every darn resource you have," Cooper said. "It's been nuts -- perfectly certifiable."