The Baker's Dozen: Cinnamon Babka

 

The Baker's Dozen: Cinnamon Babka

Finally, after two weeks of fails, I had a huge win with this one! I'm so happy and excited with how this turned out. A good friend has been trying to convince me forever to try making babka, but the timing has never been quite right, until now. I didn't have a recipe in my files to try, so I found this one online to try. Traditionally, babka is made with chocolate, and it's super rich. Since I can no longer eat chocolate, that wasn't an option. When I saw this cinnamon version, though, I knew it was the one for me! Check out my baking adventure today!

I was so excited to get this recipe going that I forgot to do my traditional ingredients shot to start with. Here we have the yeast-sugar-water mixture. This about the frothiest I've ever seen my yeast get before, so I knew that was a great sign that the bread would rise the way it needed to.

I actually followed the recipe and let my mixer do all the kneading. This after 5 minutes of kneading. The dough is silky soft and has some give to it, but holds together. When you first start, it looks really gummy and seems like you did something wrong, but just let the mixer work its magic and it'll be just fine! One small change I made from the recipe's instructions was adding the vanilla when I added the other liquid ingredients. It made no sense to add it to the dry ingredients because it wouldn't blend properly.

Here we have the vanilla-sugar syrup, the filling, and the risen dough. I have never gotten my dough to rise this much, and I was so excited!

I used a scale to measure the three pieces of dough to make sure they were as close as possible to the same size. I tried to get this as rectangular as possible, but dough sometimes has a mind of its own. It rolls out really nicely and holds its shape. So often when you roll out dough is just bounces right back and it's so irritating. I really loved how this just stayed put.

The filling has been applied, and now it's being rolled up. The dough is really soft, but it's very workable too. 

All rolled up, and the ends cut off. Save the ends, I was able to make a little babka roll with them. You don't want to waste any of this!

Cutting it in half down the middle. Use a big knife for this part.

Twining the pieces. This part is a bit precarious to pick it up and place it in the prepared loaf pan. It's a bit heavy in the middle and the filling can drip out a bit. Just scoop up anything that falls out and put it back in.

I only have two loaf pans, so the third one was going to have to be free-formed on a pan. It looked so pretty in a round that I just left it that way. I contemplated stuffing the end pieces in the center but thought it wouldn't look as nice, so I just shaped those into a little mini roll.

Here they are after their second rise, just before going into the oven.

Halfway through the baking, pre-glazing with the syrup.

And post-glaze. And just a side note, I really like that my oven is wide enough to fit all of those next to each other on one shelf!

Finished round loaf, post second glazing.

And the same for the loaves.

Here they are out of or off their pans and cooling off.

And of course I had to try it out! Look at that, it's incredible! The texture is so soft!

In spite of all the sugar in the different parts of the recipe, it's not overly sweet, which is nice. This is so amazing, you guys! I wrapped up the two loaves and plan to give one of them to my parents and one of them to my coworker, but my sister and I will be eating the round loaves!

This bread was not very hard to make. It was time-consuming, but letting the mixer do all the kneading saved me a lot of energy. This is a really great comfort food. If you're feeling down, this will help cheer you up. for sure! I'm really glad I finally followed my friend's advice and tried this out. The syrup made enough for a second batch so I might need to make another batch before it gets too hot to use the oven later in the spring!