Chocolate Bread

It’s about time I added babka to my baking repertoire. The classic Jewish bread has made quite a resurgence in the past 10 years or so, but it had its humble beginnings in the Jewish shtetls of Poland and Ukraine in the early 19^th century. It may have developed from a yeasted cake called baba, which means grandmother in Polish (related to the Eastern Yiddish bubbe). The baba was baked in a fluted, Bundt-like pan which resembled an old woman’s long, full skirt. Babka is the diminutive form of the word baba, so it means little grandmother. 

It’s unclear how the babas of old were transformed into the decadent, multilayered, chocolate-laden loaves that we know and love today, but it is said that Jewish grandmothers, after making challah bread for Shabbat, would take leftover dough and roll it up with cinnamon, poppyseeds or fruit preserves and bake it alongside the challah. Most Jewish households would not have had a fancy fluted pan, so these humble babkas were usually baked in loaf pans. Of course, the dough would have been pareve, meaning it contained neither meat nor dairy, so the early babkas would not have been made with the enriched dough found in most babkas today.

In fact, to read reminiscences of Jewish New Yorkers who grew up in the mid-to-late 20^th century, babkas were usually purchased at the grocery store and are described as “a ‘take it or leave it’ sort of confection” or “dry and crumbly and full of trans fat,” often made with palm oil or margarine. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the 21^st century: Jerry Seinfeld.

In a 1994 episode of Seinfeld, Jerry and Elaine stop at a bakery to pick up a babka to take to a dinner party. When they find out the bakery is out of chocolate babka, Jerry orders a cinnamon one instead. Elaine declares that cinnamon babka is a “lesser babka,” to which Jerry pushes back, declaring, “Cinnamon takes a backseat to no babka!”

Whether cinnamon or chocolate is the superior babka I am not about to debate here. But the Seinfeld episode catapulted this nearly forgotten dessert bread to stardom, and once the proverbial cat was out of the bag, modern bakers began to put their own twist on this traditional twisted loaf. What began as a dry and crumbly, dairy-free concoction now more closely resembles a brioche, laden with butter and dripping with chocolate or other decadent fillings.

And this modern version is what I chose to make for this signature challenge. The brief was to make any type of chocolate bread. It could be formed into any shape, the judges said, but Paul Hollywood specified that it had to have a bread-like texture. All of the bakers in the Great White Tent used enriched dough, and several made a variation on the theme of chocolate babka. 

Drawing on the experience of America’s Test Kitchen, I used this recipe. It’s a pretty straightforward babka recipe. The enriched dough features just a hint of orange zest, contrasting beautifully with the double-chocolate filling, made with both cocoa powder and melted bittersweet chocolate. I improvised with one additional ingredient, inspired by Rav’s Chocolate, Cardamom & Hazelnut Babka, which the judges loved. I thought a little cardamom would deepen the flavor profile of the loaf, and I was not disappointed. The flavors melded beautifully together, even more so a few days after it was baked!

The key to an enriched dough is time, something the GBBO bakers were short on. The best way to get a long, slow proof with enriched dough is to let it prove in the fridge overnight. This results in a better flavor and better crumb structure, according to Cook’s Illustrated (another arm of America’s Test Kitchen).

This recipe uses a different method of mixing and proving than the way I’m used to making bread. It does all the mixing and kneading with an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook. Starting off with just the flour, yeast, milk, eggs and flavorings (orange zest, vanilla and, in my case, cardamom), you mix those ingredients together for a couple minutes. Then it instructs you to cover the bowl with a dish towel and let it rest for 15 minutes. As explained in this demonstration video, resting the dough allows the flour to hydrate and the gluten to start developing. 

After that, you mix in the sugar and salt, followed by the softened butter, 1 tablespoon at a time, continuing to knead the dough with the mixer for about 10 more minutes. Then, the dough is transferred to a large, greased bowl, covered and left to rise for about an hour before being refrigerated for 2-24 hours.

The next day, you prepare your filling by melting the chocolate and butter in the microwave, then stirring in the powdered sugar, cocoa and salt. The powdered sugar stabilizes the chocolate filling so it won’t ooze out the sides of the bread as it bakes. After rolling the dough into a 12-by-18-inch rectangle and spreading it with the chocolate mixture, you roll it up and cut it lengthwise down the middle, so you have two striated halves — stripes of chocolate alternating with golden-yellow dough. You then twist the two halves together, keeping the cut sides up, and transfer them to the loaf pan. 

I was surprised that the dough didn’t need to prove again before baking, but upon researching it, I found that when using rapid-rise or instant yeast, you can get by with only one proof. Instead, this chocolatey loaf goes right in the oven for 80-90 minutes. When it comes out, while still hot, it is brushed with a simple sugar syrup, which soaks into the freshly baked bread, making it even more moist and sweet.

The hardest part of this bake was waiting for the bread to cool before cutting into it! The recipe is very clear that it must cool in the pan for a full hour and then cool on a wire rack for another 2 hours before it is sliced, perhaps so the chocolate has a chance to set. This babka is definitely very rich and chocolatey. It was great in small portions, but I couldn’t eat a whole (thick) slice in one sitting. My daughter suggested that next time I reduce the amount of filling. But who knows? Next time I might try the cinnamon babka instead…

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