Week 6: Babka

Babka – Chocolate & Cinnamon

When we started on this journey, we made a list of things we wanted to try to make and an episode of Seinfeld (one of my all time favorite sitcoms) prompted this week’s selection. In the episode, Jerry and Elaine are wanting to purchase a chocolate babka to take to a friend’s party. They don’t take a number at the bakery and end up losing out on the last chocolate babka to some friends who are going to the same party. Jerry and Elaine have to “settle” for a cinnamon babka. In the episode, it was made perfectly clear that chocolate babka is better than cinnamon babka.

Well, not too long ago, Bake From Scratch magazine had a feature on babka and thus, that particular baked item came back into my consciousness. We decided that we must make both chocolate and cinnamon in order to settle the debate for ourselves. All this talk about babka, and you (like me pre-blog) are still wondering, what is babka?

Well, if you enjoy reading about the history of foods, look into it. I liked the story of babka, but that’s not really what this blog is about, so I’ll make it short. Babka is a traditional yeast leavened sweet bread that originated in Jewish communities in Poland and Ukraine. Babka consists of a twirled dough that is rolled and braided with some kind of filling. As I was researching it, one site mentioned that European babka is the sweet dough version most common in the United States today while the Israeli version is more like a croissant dough. We made the bread like version. Babka is supposed to have originated from a creative way to use the scraps from making challah. That leftover dough was spread with jelly or almond paste and then baked, eventually becoming a bread of its own. Interestingly, “babka” means “little grandmother” in Polish…I imagine a sweet old Polish woman with her apron covered in flour making these with dough scraps just like my own mother found creative ways to use pie crust scraps.

We used two different recipes, one for each flavor, including the dough. In the interest of length, I’m going to post the Cinnamon recipe (because you can’t get it online) but will have photos of both versions. The cinnamon recipe is from our Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book and the chocolate is from the September/October 2020 Bake From Scratch magazine.

Babka Like A Boss

Ingredients

Cinnamon Babka

For the Dough

• 2 cups (10 ounces) all-purpose flour
• 1 ½ teaspoons instant or rapid-rise yeast
• ½ teaspoon table salt
• ½ cup whole milk, room temperature
• ¼ cup (1¾ ounces) sugar
• 2 large egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces and softened

Filling

• 1 cup packed (7 ounces) light brown sugar
• ¼ cup (1¼ ounces) all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1 large egg white
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• ⅛ teaspoon table salt

Egg Wash

• 1 large egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon water
• pinch table salt

Note: In October 2020, this recipe was edited for clarity. The test kitchen’s favorite loaf pan measures 8½ by 4½ inches; if you use a standard 9 by 5-inch loaf pan, increase the shaped rising time by 20 to 30 minutes and start checking for doneness 10 minutes earlier than advised in the recipe. If the dough becomes too soft to work with at any point, refrigerate it until it’s firm enough to easily handle.

Instructions

1. FOR THE DOUGH: Whisk flour, yeast, and salt together in bowl of stand mixer.
2. Whisk milk, sugar, egg yolks, and vanilla together in 4-cup liquid measuring cup until sugar has dissolved.
3. Using dough hook on low speed, slowly add milk mixture to flour mixture and mix until cohesive dough starts to form and no dry flour remains, about 2 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl as needed.
4. Increase speed to medium-low, add butter, 1 piece at a time, and knead until butter is fully incorporated, about 4 minutes.
5. Continue to knead until dough is smooth and elastic and clears sides of bowl, 10 to 12 minutes.
6. Transfer dough to lightly floured counter and knead by hand to form smooth, round ball, about 30 seconds.
7. Place dough seam side down in lightly greased large bowl or container, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let rise until increased in size by about half, 11/2 to 2 hours.
8. Place in refrigerator until dough is firm, at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours. (If dough is chilled longer than 1 hour, let rest at room temperature for 15 minutes before rolling out in step 5.)

1. FOR THE FILLING: Combine brown sugar, flour, butter, egg white, cinnamon, and salt in bowl. Measure out and reserve 1 tablespoon filling.
2. Grease 8½ by 4½-inch loaf pan. Press down on dough to deflate, then transfer to lightly floured counter. Press and roll dough into 18 by 14-inch rectangle, with long side parallel to counter edge.
3. Spread all but 1 tablespoon reserved filling over dough, leaving ½-inch border around edges.
4. Roll dough away from you into firm cylinder, keeping roll taut by tucking it under itself as you go. Pinch seam closed, then reshape cylinder as needed to be 18-inches in length with uniform thickness. Position cylinder seam side up and spread reserved filling over top. Fold cylinder on top of itself and pinch ends to seal.
5. Gently twist double cylinder twice to form double figure eight. Place loaf seam side down in prepared pan, pressing dough gently into corners. Cover loosely with greased plastic and let rise until loaf is level with lip of pan, 1½ to 2 hours.
6. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Gently brush loaf with egg wash and bake until deep golden brown and loaf registers 190 to 195 degrees, 40 to 45 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking. Let loaf cool in pan for 15 minutes. Remove loaf from pan and let cool completely on wire rack, about 3 hours, before serving.

Our Experience

Since these are yeast leavened breads, we did not mess around with the ingredients except for the fillings. We used sugar free options whenever possible in those. We used Swerve brown sugar for the cinnamon babka filling; sugar free Hershey’s chocolate chips, half regular powdered sugar and half Swerve powdered sugar in the chocolate filling.

Yeast doughs that contain a high level of fat are called enriched doughs. Fat and additional sugar increases the fermentation time of yeast. These doughs require different processes than a standard bread does. For more information on enriched doughs, check this site out:

Enriched Bread Dough: What It Is and How to Make It

For both of these recipes, we used the KitchenAid mixer with the dough hook. (We mixed the dough for the chocolate babka with the paddle and then used the hook for kneading.)

The dough was pretty simple for a yeast bread. All the dry ingredients went in together and then all the wet ingredients were added except for the butter. I learned that the fats are added at the end or it would hinder the optimal gluten development.

Wet and dry ingredients all together to be kneaded for quite awhile.

The butter was added 1 T at a time and it was kneaded even longer. The dough eventually smoothed out and started to pull away from the edges of the bowl. Before that, it was really sticky and we had to scrape the sides of the bowl several times.

Once the dough was done, we placed it in the greased bowl and allowed it to proof in the oven that we turned on to 210 degrees and then turned off. The book we were using suggested this method. (We have a warming drawer on our oven and we used it for our proofing of the chocolate ones.)

Once the dough had gone through its proofing, we took it out of the bowl, placed it on a cookie sheet making a small rectangle and then put it in the refrigerator. I had a hard time doing this because I like the yeast to be “happy” and I thought this would be the downfall of our babka. (It wasn’t.)

Once it had spent the required amount of time in the refrigerator, we rolled the small rectangle into a larger one and then (with a fair amount of difficulty) spread the filling on top of the dough leaving 1/2″ on each edge.

We then rolled it up like you would a cinnamon roll and sealed the edge (see chocolate babka picture for what that looks like). We doubled it back on itself and sealed the ends together, basically making a circle. Then the dough was twisted 3 times and placed in the bread pan.

We ran out of parchment paper so this is the only one that got any! We decided to spray the pans since the recipes both called for parchment paper that we didn’t have. The dough went into the refrigerator overnight since we didn’t have time to get it baked. (We got a later start than we had expected.)

In the morning, we took it out of the refrigerator, let it sit for the specified time, and then it was time to give it the egg wash and put the topping on. We realized that we had left the reserved filling out on the counter overnight. It had a raw egg in it. We threw it away and went with our cinnamon sugar (Splenda actually) mix that we keep in the cabinet all the time for cinnamon sugar toast.

Without the open braid, it is a fairly boring looking loaf of bread. It made up for it when we cut it open and in taste! There was one spot where the dough had been thin and it popped open during the baking otherwise it looked like a lumpy loaf of bread.

The chocolate babka dough was a slightly different recipe and different method, but in the end, the dough was very similar. and it was rolled out and the filling was spread over it just as the cinnamon filling was.

When we rolled the dough out, it was still cold from being in the refrigerator which ended up cooling the chocolate filling, making it difficult to spread. For our second loaf, we heated the chocolate filling up so it was pretty hot so that we would have an easier time spreading it. With our first loaf, we rolled it up with the cooled filling and chocolate chips sitting on top of it. With our second loaf, we pressed the chocolate chips into the softer chocolate.

Once the filling is spread out, the dough is rolled up like a cinnamon roll. If the dough isn’t long enough, roll it out some more being careful not to break it open.

Once the dough is ready, cut it in half with a serrated knife. This is where we wished we had heated the chocolate up for our first loaf. The dough just flattened out and didn’t stay stuck together and made it really difficult to twist. We called our first loaf our “ugly” loaf. The second loaf, with the hotter chocolate, stuck together really well, was much easier to twist, and looked like the pictures we were copying.

Once it is twisted, it goes into the loaf pan, cut sides up. The dough was put in the warming drawer to proof again and then baked.

Once this babka was out of the oven, a simple syrup was brushed over the top giving it the glossy appearance.

What we liked.

We enjoyed the babka quite a bit. Aubrey even said it is her favorite of all the things we have baked so far. Everyone liked them with some liking the chocolate better and others liking the cinnamon. As far as our household is concerned, the cinnamon wins by a small margin. Keep in mind that this is a bread. If you are hoping for a light pastry, this isn’t your dessert. But, for a sweet bread, it is really good. In my opinion, they both need a few seconds in the microwave before eating, especially the chocolate for a little bit of melting. Toasting was not the best idea unless you have a toaster oven…smoking toasters tend to scare people.

The cinnamon remined me of a cinnamon roll. The chocolate was unlike anything I have eaten…but really good. Not a chocolate bread or croissant, somewhere in between. It was kind of messy to eat with fingers too. The recipe we used called for Dutch process chocolate and it had a darker chocolate flavor than some in our household prefer along with a bit of salt that made the chocolate salty/sweet which was also not appreciated by some.

What we would change.

We really liked how pretty the cut version looked and would probably do the same technique with the cinnamon one in the future. After having better luck with the heated chocolate spread, we thought it might have been easier had we heated the cinnamon filling as well. I would add nuts to both, but that will only happen if I’m making it for myself since breads with nuts don’t get eaten by anyone but me in this house.

For the chocolate babka, since it tasted like dark chocolate, we would probably change it to a semi-sweet chocolate and a regular cocoa powder so more people would enjoy it. If you aren’t a fan of sweet/salty, we might suggest a little less salt in the spread as well. As stated above, we would suggest making sure the chocolate spread is pretty warm before trying to spread it on the cold dough and then press in the chocolate shavings/chips while it’s still warm.

What we learned.

This was our first attempt at making an enriched dough and we thought it went pretty well. Yeast doughs can be very finicky so we made sure we followed the recipe and bought fresh yeast too. We also learned how to make a marbled bread, regardless of what the filling might be. The second chocolate version was really quite pretty and we were pretty proud of our creation. When we cut into each one, the very center of each loaf had the best marbling. It was pretty satisfying.

There is no question, we will be making these again…but the jury is still out as to whether cinnamon is a runner up to chocolate!

Until next week, Happy Baking!