Nutella Babka
Recipe by Artisan Bryan
This was a super duper fun bake. It was a kneaded, enriched bread, something I’ve never done before. The dough itself was much stickier thanks to the butter, and it took roughly an hour+ to slap the dough around until it was no longer sticky and smooth in appearance.
The other surprising thing was how much the dough grew. It doubled in the first bulk rise, then doubled again after resting, and then doubled again in the oven after shaping into a babka, and then doubled AGAIN when baking. I should have halved the recipe, because I had bucket loads of babka. Thankfully, I was able to give half of it away.
Things I would do differently for future babkas:
The nutella flavor wasn’t very obvious. I’ll need to put more nutella and twist and braid more so that more nutella is layered within a single slice.
It was also too soft to handle easily for braiding, which is why for the next attempt, I would highly recommend the following:
Laminate and roll, then chill the log before cutting and braiding
Cut each strip and twist the half rolls before braiding so that you get more layering.
Overall, would definitely keep making babkas, and laminate with different flavors, potentially:
cinnamon sugar
pesto and sundried tomato
garlic and chives
cardamom