Comments on: chocolate babka

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 06:16:02 +0000

Hi Deb, I just got my first try of chocolate babkas out of the oven and omg I never thought I would be able to bake something that fancy! I’m good at baking but breads are a new territory for me, and I’ve been wanting to make your babka recipe for a while. It is unbelievably good! Thank you so much for the amazing recipe, I think this is going to be my favorite thing to bake for a long while! I was wondering though, I’ve cut the amount of ingredients in half because I wanted to make just one big loaf, and for some reason the dough did not double in size after I let it sit for an hour. I mean it still turned out great, but I was wondering if there’s a tip in mixing the dough ingredients to get it just right?

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 21:08:15 +0000

Okay, I’ve been following your blog for years, but I’ve never made a recipe. Last year for Easter Sunday breakfast I made strawberry cheesecake pancakes. They were a hit, but I had to figure out how to one-up last year’s success. We just watched the Seinfeld Babka episode with the whole family earlier this week and I thought, hey, I wonder what that is . . . (I’m not Jewish, I’d never heard of babka before) and I found your recipe. Your photo sealed the deal for me. All the other recipes I saw looked like a white sandwich bread with little swirls of chocolate in the middle. But yours . . . holy Toledo, Batman! . . . I have never in my life had my hands in that much chocolate. I did use chocolate chips because good chocolate is hard to find here, and prohibitively expensive. I made 4 8X4X2.5 loaves, and it worked perfectly. I should have weighed the chocolate because I had about 1/2 cup left over, but that’s okay! They are gorgeous, I can’t imagine them not working. Can’t wait to bake them and take them for Easter dinner at our friends’ house!

By: Kelly

Kelly — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:10:45 +0000

If you have a Breadsmith near you, their chocolate Babka is amazing! :)

By: Elisson

Elisson — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 02:21:08 +0000

P.S. – I used 4 cups all-purpose flour and 2 cups bread flour. It worked beautifully – a nice elastic dough with just the right amount of lift.

By: Elisson

Elisson — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 02:19:28 +0000

I had tried my hand at a chocolate babka a week or so ago, with equivocal results… and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bother essaying it again until I found this post.

After reading the florid – but completely justifiable – preamble and looking at the recipe itself, I saw that this was the Chocolate Babka of My Dreams. And so, I made my three loaves. And, lo, they (or, at least the one we cut into this evening) were magnificent. Oh. My. Sweet. Gawd.

This babka, unlike the typical pareve commercial versions, has all the richness that real butter can impart. And it has the exact right flavor profile: the perfect blend of chocolate and cinnamon. (I tend to be a Chocolatarian rather than a Cinnamonian when it comes to babka politics, but this one has something for everyone.)

It is unabashedly rich – not an everyday treat, unless one wishes to end up looking like a circus poster. But it is special, and it pretty much kicks the ass of even the most wonderful childhood memory-babkas like a red-headed stepchild.

By: Emily

Emily — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 17:57:16 +0000

Made this last night. A couple of things happened…

Yes, this recipe does have an incredible amount of chocolate. So much chocolate that when I cut open my breads, the molten chocolate ran out like lava and the bread collapsed. Hardly a cake/bread. More like a chocolate bread stew.

I had two metal small-isn’t loaf pans that you said to use, and then I had one glass loaf pan that was a tiny bit bigger, wider by a half inch… That bread turned out a disaster. The ends burned TERRIBLY and the middle was still raw dough. Had to cut it up into little slices and bake them on a sheet to cook the dough.

I would recommend not using glass loaf pans, stick to the metal ones. Also, use 1/2 to 3/4 of the chocolate she used. I love chocolate as much as the next girl, but it’s delicious when you’re able to eat it in bread, not with a spoon on your plate after you cut open the bread.

By: Heidi

Heidi — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 06:00:25 +0000

Can the loaves be prepared and then stashed in the fridge overnight before baking?

By: Nomi

Nomi — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:05:34 +0000

Wow. Being a lover of babka and baking in general, I decided to use this snowy day in upstate NY to make this recipe. I did do a 1/2 recipe (which wasn’t too complicated) and I made one full-size babka (for shabbat) and one little one to make sure that we didn’t bust into the one for shabbat too early. I didn’t find this too challenging and boy is that a delicious babka! Super chocolatey, not too sweet, the dough is delicate. I’m totally doing this again. Thank you for this amazing blog!

By: Jodi

Jodi — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:07:56 +0000

Becca-

Once baked, the babka freezes beautifully. There appears to be no impact on quality after defrosting, assuming no freezer burn.

By: deb

deb — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 15:54:08 +0000

Hi Becca — I would 1/3 it for 1 pan, 2/3 it for 2 pans.