-We don't want to have like one
big giant bite
of Nutella here.
Although it's not bad.
You know, I can't complain.
Like, let these be our troubles.
♪♪
♪♪
My name is Edan Leshnick.
I'm the head Pastry
and Viennoiserie Manager
at Breads Bakery in New York,
and we're gonna make some
amazing chocolate babka today.
The most important part
of making babka is the dough.
So we're gonna start off
with whole milk.
I'm going to use two large eggs.
I got my sugar in here.
I prefer to mix the sugar
and the salt with the liquids.
Just helps them dissolve
a little bit better.
And I'm gonna use the whisk just
a little bit just to kind of
stir things around.
So, I'm gonna add
some of the vanilla
and then we have a pastry flour
and a bread flour.
The gluten percentage
in the bread flour
is obviously much higher.
The pastry flour is used
to kind of weaken it,
help us roll it out
a lot easier.
And then we have
our room-temperature butter,
because the fat
within the butter is gonna
encase the gluten strands,
as well.
So that's why we mix this
in the beginning
because, again, we don't want
a very strong dough.
The butter, in this case,
I add it all at the same time.
In the long run,
it's actually going to
help the dough
weaken a little bit.
And then we're using
fresh yeast.
You can use dry yeast.
If you do use dry yeast,
you'll have to reduce
the amount of water content
in there
because basically dry yeast,
all it is
is taking the fresh yeast,
taking all that water out,
and just being left
with the dry particles.
What we're using here
is fresh yeast
just to get the enzymes
activated
and, in that case,
to release more flavor.
I'm going to start off
at a low speed
just to gather
all the ingredients together
and just kind of get
a homogenous dough.
This is the perfect time
to clean up.
The smell changes throughout
the stages of the mix,
but at this point
I still smell fresh butter,
which is a great smell
in itself.
But I mean we want to get
a little bit more complexity
out of that.
I'm just gonna crank up
the speed just a little bit.
And now what we're doing
is we're activating a little bit
more of that gluten strands,
and these gluten strands
are going to start
to align themselves
in a way that's going
to create this network,
and this network
is what gives us that strength.
The dough is coming together.
What I like to do is sometimes
transfer it to the table.
I do want to, like,
feel it a little bit.
So what I'm doing is I'm
stretching it a little bit
and then folding it
right over on itself
and that's also, again,
to align those gluten networks.
So this is...
[ Sniffs ]
This is an amazing thing for me.
Ah.
I can't stop smelling it.
I have to stop.
We want to wrap it
very, very tightly,
and that's to ensure that the
dough is not going to proof.
The less air and the less oxygen
we give it, the better it is.
When our yeast cells
take the carbon dioxide
and basically convert
that into oxygen
and eat the sugars,
and by them working harder,
we're actually
getting more flavor.
Now, this dough
is going to mature
for at least four hours
in the refrigerator
in a cool space
around four degrees Celsius.
So our babka dough has rested
for at least four hours --
ideally 8 to 12 --
and we're ready
to roll this thing out
and make some beautiful
babkas out of it.
I'm to start off by just
flouring the board a little bit.
I'll start off by going to
about 35 inch in length,
and then as we're rolling
the babka, we can stretch it out
with our hands to make it
a little bit easier.
For me when I grew up,
I grew up in Israel.
And during our childhood,
it's filled with babka.
It's not a bad childhood.
Even till today,
whenever I bite into a babka,
those memories
are just kind of like
walking around in, you know,
the streets of Jerusalem
on a Friday,
have this like ambiance.
It comes back to me
with every bite.
And this should be pretty good.
So, I'm going to start spreading
some of this Nutella.
So, we do make all types
of different kinds of babka,
whether it's sweet or savory --
cheesecake babka,
cinnamon babka, apple babka.
There's always these ideas.
We work on it.
We see if it actually
works or not,
and then usually it works.
I'm spreading
the Nutella pretty evenly.
It has to be balanced.
And now we're going to take some
semi-sweet dark chocolate chips,
and these balance off
really well
with the sweetness
of the Nutella.
As the chocolate chips bake,
they don't completely melt.
And once the babka cools again,
they get a little bit firmer
than the Nutella itself
in the dough.
As you're biting into it,
you're feeling
these different textures
and the different flavors.
And now I'm going to use
these two thumbs
and I'm basically gonna roll
this up into a roulade.
So, I'm rolling this up
pretty tightly,
and as I'm doing this, I'm also
stretching out the dough
a little bit,
because if I get to a point
where I roll the entire dough
and then I have to stretch it,
it's a little more difficult.
Can't recover from a bad roll.
You always want to find
that balance with the dough.
Like, you don't want
to stretch it too much.
You don't want to,
like, overwork it.
Alright. Pizza cutter.
Nice.
Alright, so we have this roulade
that we cut in half,
and you can see these layers
as they're rolling up.
Now we're going to cut this
in half again.
Now, the best way
to find the half
if you don't have a ruler
is you hold
one hand to this end,
one hand to this end,
and you clap.
You want to measure?
You'll see I'm right.
So this was 48. Look.
I want the camera to see this.
24.
[ Laughter ]
We're going to roll this up
into a braid.
Now, this is the Breads Bakery
secret.
One, and then...
...as many rolls as you can get
without over-tightening it.
That's a babka.
Stretch out a little bit
if you feel
that the dough can
or is retracting.
It smells like heaven.
[ Chuckles ]
When people eat babka,
especially when we use
the hazelnut spread,
it kind of reminds them
of their childhood
even if they never had babka
in their childhood.
It has this kind of
universal approach to it
that people really like.
Alright.
So we have these babka molds.
We're basically going
to put these in just like that.
And I'm kind of, like,
bringing this together
and then I'm pushing
these ends out
so that we get like
a nice tension at the end.
You know, I'm the only one that
doesn't use gloves
at work -- I mean,
you don't have to use gloves
'cause these are gonna be
baked -- because they don't like
the feeling of Nutella
on their hands.
I like it.
This is the best part.
We have meetings and stuff.
"Sorry.
My hands are dirty right now.
I can only do this after babka.
Sorry."
[ Laughter ]
Now we want this to proof.
We don't want any more of
the acidity flavors
and those kind of flavors
to develop.
We want the air to kind of
build up in these babkas
and develop more flavors.
The aroma is gonna change
as these proof
and we actually want this to
proof
at a controlled environment
with a little bit of humidity.
The best way to get that at home
is to boil some water in a pot
and then stick that
into the oven,
put the babkas in with that
and just close the oven
and just let it rest for about
an hour and a half, two hours.
So if these aren't proofed,
it's most likely going to be
under bake and raw
because the air
won't flow evenly
and they're also gonna be
very, very dense and chewy.
So we don't want that to happen.
We'll proof this,
and then we'll bake it.
These babkas are proofed.
You can definitely sense
that they're ready
to go into the oven
when you see that volume
change completely.
It pretty much fills the mold
on all the sides.
♪♪
As our babkas are in the oven
right now,
we're gonna make our syrup.
It's a very, very simple syrup.
Hence the name simple syrup.
We are using just plain
granulated sugar
and water.
And we're just waiting
for this to come to a boil
so that the sugar dissolves.
At that point,
our syrup is ready.
It's been about 25 minutes,
and our babkas have
this amazing color to them
and an amazing smell.
We transferred our syrup
to this bowl.
The objective of the syrup
here is to basically engulf
all that moisture
that we have in the babka.
Make sure that all the babka
and all the surface of it
is covered,
because you can see, like,
what a basket looks like
without the syrup
and with the syrup,
and it really is a different
beast.
As this cools down
and creates this
very, very, very thin crust
to it,
which maintains
more of that moisture.
If you can hold yourself from
eating these throughout the day,
then by the end of the day,
they'll still be okay.
They look beautiful.
They smell amazing.
You kind of smell, once the
syrup is on there as well,
that caramelization
from the dough that's happening,
as well as the Nutella
and the chocolate chip.
Everything
is like this orchestra of --
this is the crescendo.
This is the time
to to taste our babka.
I'll teach you the proper way
of eating a babka.
We don't like to cut them.
We like to tear at them,
kind of like a challah.
It's a sin to cut up a challah,
and this one we said
is frowned upon.
So tear the babka by all means.
They say the challah,
though, you have to share.
Babka, you don't have to share.
I just can't really
contain myself anymore.
And one, two, three.
♪♪
I don't get to do this
this often, I swear.
We're tasting
a very nice, soft texture.
That happens because we didn't
mix the dough too much.
We don't have too much
of a gluten development here.
Almost like a cross
between a cake and a loaf.
And then when you mix in the
Nutella and the chocolate chips,
and add the caramelization
that's happening,
it really is insane.
For this babka recipe,
just click the link below
or come visit us at Breads.
We're all over, and enjoy.
♪♪
♪♪
♪♪
