• Reply by BakerIrene on February 18, 2012 at 8:36 pm
• 

This recipe as all KAF recipes has a LOT of salt.

You have to use KAF all-purpose or unbleached bread flour (if you are buying a local brand).

Start over with your liquid at 90F and use ONE tablespoon active dry yeast. Mix the water, yeast and 1/2 cup flour and let it sit until bubbly.

Then add the eggs, etc (1 teaspoon salt) and mix well. Add flour SLOWLY until you get a soft dough. Knead the butter in by hand (adding it in about 6 lumps) and keep kneading until your dough turns silky. It takes 8-10 minutes for all the kneading.

This will take 2 hours to rise the first time. After that, you punch down thoroughly until there is no more popping. Do NOT knead, just press firmly with the rolling pin. Then follow the directions the rest of the way. It should only take 1 hour for the final rise, and you should bake it at that timepoint regardless of how high it looks.

The chemistry of why: the salt slows down the yeast. So does the butter. Active dry yeast is a little better at raising this kind of dough, and you give it a head start before the butter goes in. And then you let it rise fully.

No reason to slit the top, either. If you hate the pockets, skip the butter in the filling.

Yes I've been baking babka for 40 years...

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• Reply by tammywalmsley on February 18, 2012 at 9:05 pm
• 

Thanks very much. I plan to try again this week and will follow your advice. Clearly I have a lot to learn!

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• Reply by Mike Nolan on February 18, 2012 at 9:50 pm
• 

I made the chocolate babka recipe in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day a number of times during the testing for that book. (So many times that my family got tired of it and I haven't made it since!)

That dough rose very well, almost as much as a Challah. Maybe your dough was a bit on the dry side?

The weirdest variant I tried of it was a three-part braid, with one part filled with chocolate, one part filled with banana and one part filled with strawberry. Banana Split Babka. I used too much banana and not enough strawberry, but other than that it was tasty.

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• Reply by BakerIrene on February 19, 2012 at 8:12 am
• 

Tammy, the problem is with the recipe, not you.

The KAF test kitchen has this mantra about dumping all the bread ingredients into a mixer at once, regardless of whether there might be a better way. Look at the Paczki blog to see how they are sometimes so far off the mark.

I have tried the different kinds of yeast (active dry-instant-bread machine) and decided that I would only keep the active dry in the house. You can use it just like the instant yeast for making pizza, and you can use it to make the rich and sweet doughs for various traditional breads.

Buy your yeast in a jar or a large package, NOT the envelopes. Keep it in a glass jar in the fridge to make sure it is fresh.

So where does a beginner find good recipes? I inherited mine...

I have looked at many of the KAF recipes online. Use the KAF recipes with 1/3 the salt they call for. Add half the flour at the beginning, and add only as much more flour as the dough needs. Those two simple changes will cover most of what you need to worry about.

Use KAF bread flour if you can buy it locally. Otherwise use KAF all purpose to learn to make bread. Other US brands do not bake bread the same way. Use Five Roses unbleached if you are buying flour in Canada.

Knead your first several batches by hand. You will notice that there is a change from springy to silky--that is "kneaded enough" regardless of what kind of bread.

And don't give up.

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