Twist like a Babka

Do you remember that Seinfeld episode that saw Jerry and Elaine fight for the last Chocolate Babka in the store? The Babka looked scrumptious, but you always wondered what on earth it really was, and, more importantly, how you could eat it. Well, the Babka is a popular Eastern European festival bread. Its etymology is interesting. Babushka is Russian for grandma, while Babcia (pronounced bapb-cha) is Polish for grandma. And that’s where this glorious golden loaf, swirled with spice, chocolate, nuts and other good things, gets its name from.

The Babka dough is enriched with butter and egg yolks, and that makes it similar to the French Brioche, the Austrian Kugelhopf and the Isreali Kranz cake. Amongst all these varieties, the Kranz cake is the one that has the best visual appeal. The bread shaped using this method looks spectacular with the filling oozing out of exposed swirls of the braided loaf of bread. Traditionally, the Babka filling is made up of nuts and raisins but in this case, veering away from the norm and using chocolate and cinnamon is a change for the better.

This is the kind of bread you want to try your hand at when you want to take the leap from baking cakes to baking bread. Cakes are simpler — they don’t need the finicky yeast, nor do they need all the waiting time for the dough to rise and develop in flavour and structure. Breads, on the other hand, come with all those hassles in addition to the nagging fear of all the effort falling flat — quite literally.

As daunting a task as it might seem, this recipe is easy, because the technique is a cross between that of making cake and bread. You begin with creaming sugar and butter, adding the egg yolks, mixing in the flour, and pouring in the milk with yeast in it. Before you know it, your experiment comes together in the form of supple golden dough waiting to be baked two hours later. And the bonus? You’ll have melted chocolate perfumed with cinnamon in every bite, and in your fingers while baking.

Yield: 2 loaves
Ingredients:

• Instant yeast, 2 tbsp / 19g
• Lukewarm milk, 3/4th cup / 170g
• Butter, 6 tbsp / 85g
• Sugar, 6 tbsp / 85g
• Vanilla extract, 1 tsp
• Egg yolks, 4
• All-purpose flour, 3.5 cups / 425g
• Salt, 1 tsp
  
  For the filling:
• Dark chocolate, coarsely grated, 1.5 cups / 225g
• Ground cinnamon, 1 tsp
• Butter, 1/4th cup / 55g

Method:

• Whisk the yeast into lukewarm milk and set aside for about 5min.
• In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.
• Add the yolks to the bowl, one at a time, mixing constantly for 30s between each addition. Add vanilla and mix until light and fluffy.
• Add the flour and salt and continue to mix until it all comes together.
• Now mix in the milk and yeast mixture and knead together to form a soft, supple dough.
• Let this rise for about 2 hours, or refrigerate overnight, making sure to remove it from the fridge two hours before baking.
• For the filling: mix the chocolate, butter and cinnamon together in a bowl.
• Once the dough has risen, roll it into a sheet with a thickness of 1/8th to 1/4th inch. Ensure the sheet is well-dusted with flour at all times.
• Spread the chocolate mixture over it.
• Roll the dough like a Swiss roll cake and then pinch the seams to seal it. Cut it into half along the width for two medium loaves.
• For the twisty shape, cut the log down the middle lengthwise, making sure to keep half an inch at the top end attached. Twist each leg over each other alternately to get the braided look.
• Now, keep it aside for another 45 minutes to let it rise.
• Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius and bake for 15-20 min.

Babka is best served with a cup of coffee or sliced and slightly toasted the next day for breakfast.

Some pointers: If you’re going to be baking a lot of bread, I recommend using instant yeast. It is available at the Tower Store at Crawford market and lasts over a year when refrigerated. Another option would be to ask your local bakery for some fresh yeast worth Rs 5-10.

Shape the bread on the baking pan — this is the best way to keep the shape intact instead of transferring from work surface to baking sheet.

The Babka tends to brown quickly because of the addition of sugar. Cover it with a sheet of foil if you’d like to avoid this. I don’t because I feel that it lends a warm glow to the bread.

Adapted from: Artisan Breads Everyday by Peter Reinhart
— Shaheen Peerbhai is a camera toting food blogger who is always thinking about what to bake next