Chocolate Babka Bread

Chocolate babka, a classic eastern europian sweet and stuffed bread, shaped in a twist braid. Traditionally this bread is filled with chocolate and cinnamon.

Baking a chocolate babka is very easy. Trust me! The Eastern European yeast-risen bread is made with brioche dough and wrapped around a dark fudge that is very moist and deeply flavored. Everyone loves It…

How to Make Chocolate Babka Bread Video:

How I Made Brioche Dough for Chocolate Babka Bread:

Brioche is a bread of French origin that is similar to a highly enriched pastry, and whose high egg and butter content gives it a rich and tender crumb. It is as “light and slightly puffy, more or less fine, according to the proportion of butter and eggs.

Babka dough is very easy to make, I used in the dough making all-purpose flour, salt, ground cinnamon. Cinnamon enhances its flavor, If you don’t like its taste you can skip it. It’s not a Big deal.

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There is something magical about brioche. The combination of butter, eggs, and flour come together to create a soft, fluffy, and flavorful bread. It’s the use of butter and eggs that leads to it’s pale yellow crumb and thin golden brown, shiny crust

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Activated instant dry yeast in lukewarm water at 90 degrees F helps the dough to rise, which is very important in making the bread.

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Although this dough is a bit time consuming to make, it’s a rather simple process. Much of the “time” is spent allowing the dough to rest and rise.

With the help of a stand mixer, creating the brioche dough is quite easy, that I am using in this recipe, but if you don,t have a stand mixer, knead the dough with hands around 10-15 min until its gluten sets.

Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, and cover the bowl. The dough is going to rise for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours until it’s quite puffy and doubled in size. After 2 hours gently deflate the dough, and knead it again for few minutes. With this recipe, you can make one enough chocolate babka bread.

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How to Make Chocolate Filling:

I filled this babka with semi-sweet chocolate and cocoa with the infused flavor of coffee and cinnamon. To make the filling: Combine the sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cocoa, and espresso. Melt the chocolate on a double boiler and stir in the melted butter. In the end, I added all the spices that I mixed before. The mixture will look grainy and slick; that’s OK.

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How to Shape the Babka:

Roll out the dough and shape the dough into a 9″ x 18″, 1/4″-thick rectangle. If the dough “fights back,” let it rest for 10 minutes to relax the gluten, then stretch it some more. Don’t be fussy about this; 19″ or 20″ is as good as 18″.

Smear each piece of the dough with half the filling, coming to within an inch of the edges.

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Starting with an end, roll the dough gently into a log, sealing the seam and ends. By using a sharp knife to cut the log in half lengthwise (not crosswise) to make two pieces of dough about 10″ long each; cut carefully, to prevent too much filling from spilling out.

With the exposed filling side up, twist the two pieces into a braid, tucking the ends underneath. Place the log into a lightly greased 9″ x 5″ loaf pan.

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Cover the pan with plastic wrap, and let the loaf rise until it is very puffy and have crowned a good inch over the rim of the pan, 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 300°F.

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Bake the bread for 35 minutes at 300 F or 170 C the loaf should be a deep golden brown. To ensure the loaves are baked through, insert a digital thermometer into the center of one loaf. It should register at least 190°F.

Remove the loaves from the oven, and immediately loosen the edges with a heatproof spatula or table knife. Let the loaves cool for 10 minutes, then turn them out of the pans onto a rack to cool completely.

How to Prepare Sugar Glaze:

Take an equal amount of water and sugar into a saucepan and cook until reduced to half. Brush this glaze over the baked babka and serve this traditional babka with tea or coffee.

Babka Tips and Tricks:

• Sometimes, to make things simple, I will use a chocolate spread such as Nutella instead of making the filling myself. You can do the same if you prefer.
• The sugar syrup not only makes the cake shiny and beautiful but also keeps it fresh for longer.
• Speaking of freshness, as with bread, this cake will start drying out after 24 hours, but the good news is that it freezes well.
• Instead of water, you can use milk or a combination of water and milk.
• While some like babka because of the dough, to me it’s all about the filling, so the more chocolate, the better.
• If the chocolate filling becomes firm, warm it up a bit in the microwave or over low heat. Don’t use it hot, though, since it can warm the dough and cause it to melt.