
Delicious delicious Babka. Fill it with chocolate, or cinnamon and walnuts, maybe even try a savory pesto? Made with layers upon layers of butter this rich dough is similar to the laminated varieties used to make croissants, kouign amann, palmiers or any pastry you find with lots of buttery flaky layers.
Babka Dough
½ teaspoon Vanilla extract
½ cup milk, whole
2 teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
2¼ cups All-purpose Flour
2 cups + 2 Tablespoons Cake Flour
2 Eggs
⅓ cup sugar
⅛ teaspoon fine salt
5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
13 Tablespoons butter, unsalted
Instructions
Make the Dough
In the bowl of a standing mixer, warm up the milk slightly until it reaches a temperature somewhere between 100-110F. Stir in the yeast and allow to rest for several minutes. Once the yeast has had time to activate add your vanilla, flours, eggs, sugar, salt and finally half of your butter. Using the dough hook attachment, mix these ingredients together on low until the mixture is well combined, approximately 2 minutes. Add in the remaining butter and turn up the mixer to medium. The dough should start coming together into a smooth elastic ball, about 4 minutes.
Work That
Turn out your babka dough onto a lightly floured surface, dust the top with more flour and begin kneading your bread until it becomes quite elastic, and a small piece can be stretched quite thin without tearing. About five minutes of kneading should do the trick. Shape the dough into a plump round ball and place it in a floured bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 30 minutes.
Chill the Dough
After the dough has risen, set it out onto a large piece of plastic wrap and using your hands press it into a rectangle. Wrap up the dough with more plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours before using.
The Butter Block
To prepare the butter set it on a large sheet of parchment paper and place another sheet over it. Using your fist, smash the butter into a 7 x 8-inch rectangle. A rolling pin could work for this too, I suppose, but when presented with the opportunity to punch a pile of butter why not take it? Wrap up the butter and refrigerate until ready to use.
Make the Fold
When ready, place the thoroughly chilled dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out into a 7 x 16-inch rectangle. Endeavor to keep the sides as straight, and the corners as sharp as possible.
Add the Butter
Place your prepared butter block on one end of the rectangle. Placing it near the edges, so the dough just peaks out around the butter.
The First Fold
Fold the dough up over the butter, pressing around the edges of the dough to seal the butter inside. This is what’s called a “Simple Fold”.
The Envelope Fold
Roll the butter and dough out into another large rectangle of dough, being careful not to allow the butter to seep out the edges. Once the rectangle is rolled, visually divide it into thirds. Fold down the top third of the dough, then fold the bottom third up, giving you a neat little envelope of dough.
Wrap the dough up in plastic wrap and refrigerate for thirty minutes, before rolling out and repeating the envelope fold again. Do this at least three times in order to get as many layers of butter and dough as possible.
Use this recipe to make a delicious Nutella Stuffed Chocolate Babka!
I really enjoy reading your posts, thank you. I made this babka dough to your recipe, but I think there may be an error in the amount of cake flour you list (perhaps 1 cup rather than 2) – my loaves sank after baking & I wonder if there was too much flour to yeast.
Hey there Robyn!
I’m glad you tried our Babka recipe but sorry to hear it sank in the middle, I went ahead and looked back through my notes and 2 cups is correct. We measure out our flour by using the scoop and scrape method. Where we use a smaller cup to fill up our measuring cup then use the back of a knife or another flat utensil to level the top. What’s even more accurate is to simply weigh all your ingredients. We are planning to go through all our current recipes and adjust them so you can have the option to do both.
Bread dough collapses for a number of reasons but the most prevalent among them is that there hasn’t been enough gluten development when it was being made. The more you knead your dough, the more gluten you develop in it. When this gluten hasn’t been sufficiently developed the CO2 produced by the yeast as it ferments the sugars in the dough escapes and the bread will fall flat and sink. I would try it again if you have the inclination this time really making sure to knead that dough!
Thank you. It will be really helpful having weight measurements. I did some other research after my babka disaster & wonder if it could also have been that I didn’t rest the dough for long enough after the final turn. I will try again though, thanks for the encouragement.
I did manage to salvage it though – I made a bread pudding, spreading almond cream on the babka slices & adding cooked apples before pouring on the custard mix & baking. It was delicious!
That is a possibility, under-proving could definitely have something to do with that. I’m glad you came up with a good fix though! That bread pudding sounds absolutely delightful!