Chocolate and cinnamon babka

Recently was looking forward to make bread, something with more dough than what I usually do.


I'll tell you  how I knew about this type of bread, Seinfeld show it was, when Jerry and Elaine are going to buy it and see that an old woman takes the last one in the store.


The babka is a brioche type bread, which comes from Eastern Europe, filled with fruit. And there is another bakba, the Jewish tradition type, which is filled with chocolate and cinnamon, sometimes topped with streusel.This is the one I´m interested about

This may not be a recipe that everyone will do, but it is very easy to prepare, it´s difficult for us to go wrong, and it´s worth, the result is spectacular.

For a 1 loaf made in a pan 30 x 12 cm:


Chocolate and Cinnamon Babka
Ingredients for the dough
Milk 120 g or 120 cc
50 g common sugar
Egg 1
Flour with dry yeast 240 g (it´s a prepared flour we have in Argentina, if not available put 20-30 g active yeast)
Salt 1 / 3 tsp
75 g butter



Filling ingredients
55 g butter
65 g common sugar
Chocolate 100 g
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Procedure
- To make the dough: In a bowl mix milk, sugar and egg.
- Add the flour and mix to form dough.
- Add the softened butter, and work it until all it´s incorporated.
- Dump it in floured counter and knead until it becomes a little smoother. Do not worry if you are not sure when.
- Put in the bowl again and allow to rise, well covered, for an hour or an hour and ten minutes, or until doubled in volume, in a warm place
- Meanwhile, you can make the filling: Chop fine the chocolate 
- Mix soft butter with sugar, cinnamon and chocolate. It is a kind of chocolate paste. Reserve at room temperature until use.
- When the dough doubles in volume, put in the well floured counter and flatten with your hands until they have left a thickness of less than 1 cm.
- Put the filling over the dough and spread it with your hands, leaving a 2 cm border without filling. Don´t spread it with a spoon because the dough is very soft, and if it breaks, do not worry.
- Form a roll, with the help of a flat spatula or something like that, because of the soft dough
- Flatten slightly bending the ends and roll it to the middle
- Twist the dough and put in buttered pudding mold.
- Wet the surface of the roll with water, an egg, or milk and sprinkle with sugar.
- Leave covered for 30 minutes to double in volumen again.
- Bake in preheated oven at 180°C (350°F)
- Unmold when cool slightly.

If you want you can put the streusel before putting in the oven, do it with 110 g of ordinary sugar, 50 g  flour and 50 g cold butter. Mix everything with your fingers, or else with a fork until crumbs have large.


I didn´t do it with the streusel because it was to much butter in a recipe for me and with only sugar  it looks good, gives a crisp crust .


If you do not have available that comes pre-mixed flour with dry yeast, fresh yeast can be added in step with the milk and then mix the sugar and egg.

It seems that the recipe has many steps, but when they do they will see that it is simple, you can easily remember.