Baker Baker: Chocolate Babka
As most of my readers know (Hi Mom!), I've been a bit of an amateur baker for quite awhile. I've even gotten a bit of a reputation for good cakes and have gotten requests three times now. I've been really interested in bread baking for a while, but couldn't stand all the kneading.
I finally (baking) geeked out about a month ago and bought a stand mixer. Since then, it's been the Brooklyn Bread-o-Rama up in here. I've made Semolina Bread with Fennel & Currants, Raisin-Pecan Bread, Hot Cross Buns, Lemon Blueberry Bread (a quick bread), and a few different kinds of sourdough. I even raised my own sourdough starter! Which reminds me... time to feed mine...
With my latest creation, I realized I should start taking pictures and posting them here. So, without further ado...
Chocolate Babka! The recipe is from The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger, but split in two and baked in loaf pans instead of the single bundt pan she recommends. I didn't think to start doing this until after the babka was baked, so no pictures of the process, but I'll include some of those next time. One of the loaves had a blowout — the chocolate filling tried to make a break for it by busting through the top of the loaf on one side — but it was no less delicious. Next time I'll try not rolling it quite so tight.
I'll be submitting this to YeastSpotting: a sort of "hall of fame" of bread on the Wild Yeast blog. If you're at all interested in bread baking, Wild Yeast has taught me a lot. I highly recommend it (and the YeastSpotting pics are pretty inspiring).
I finally (baking) geeked out about a month ago and bought a stand mixer. Since then, it's been the Brooklyn Bread-o-Rama up in here. I've made Semolina Bread with Fennel & Currants, Raisin-Pecan Bread, Hot Cross Buns, Lemon Blueberry Bread (a quick bread), and a few different kinds of sourdough. I even raised my own sourdough starter! Which reminds me... time to feed mine...
With my latest creation, I realized I should start taking pictures and posting them here. So, without further ado...
(click for bigger version)
Chocolate Babka! The recipe is from The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger, but split in two and baked in loaf pans instead of the single bundt pan she recommends. I didn't think to start doing this until after the babka was baked, so no pictures of the process, but I'll include some of those next time. One of the loaves had a blowout — the chocolate filling tried to make a break for it by busting through the top of the loaf on one side — but it was no less delicious. Next time I'll try not rolling it quite so tight.
I'll be submitting this to YeastSpotting: a sort of "hall of fame" of bread on the Wild Yeast blog. If you're at all interested in bread baking, Wild Yeast has taught me a lot. I highly recommend it (and the YeastSpotting pics are pretty inspiring).
Labels: baking
posted by Sam at 1:28 PM
5 Comments:
Beautiful! Thanks for sending this to YeastSpotting.
Your bread looks really really good!
Cheers,
Great idea to split the Babka up. I keep avoiding making up a recipe because I don't want to be commited to eat such a huge loaf, but if I could split it... in the freezer with the second half! Genius!
I love the look of your smaller loaf too. Very pretty!
Welcome to the wonderful world of bread baking, although I warn you it can be quite addicting....
Delicious looking bread!
Nice job . . . Another thing you might want to try is rolling the dough really thin and spreading the filling thinner, too. That way you have more layers of filling and bread and explosions are less likely.
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