Posts Tagged “ashkenaz”

Is there anything finer than a good chocolate babka?  Probably not, but after bringing back no fewer than three such treats from New York City this weekend, I got to wondering, just what is babka, anyway?

Like so many of my favorite baked things, babka comes from Ashkenaz.  Wikipedia cites “Eastern European” origins, Russian etymology (Babka = бабка = grandmother), and savory variants from Belarus and Lithuania.  But none of those technicalities really get to the soul of the babka.

We all know that Jerry and Elaine spend a good portion of The Dinner Party seeking, discussing, dissecting and obsessing about babka. (I edited the spelling from “bobka” in the amateur transcription linked here) That’s a start.

JERRY: That’s the last Babka. They got the last Babka.

ELAINE: I know. They’re going in first with the last Babka.

JERRY: That was our Babka.

ELAINE: You can’t beat a Babka.

JERRY: We should have had that Babka.

My particular prize was a Green’s chocolate babka, private labeled for Zabars.  It’s a little flaky but mostly gooey, disturbingly heavy, and oddly parve.  A seemingly similar article can be found at Delancey Desserts.

A little poking around led to a recipe from of all people, Martha Stewart, which including milk, butter and cream, so definitely not that close to Green’s, but which does reveal the basic chemistry of the babka:

• 1 1/2 cups warm milk, 110 degrees
• 2 (1/4 ounce each) packages active dry yeast
• 1 3/4 cups plus a pinch of sugar
• 3 whole large eggs, room temperature
• 2 large egg yolks, room temperature
• 6 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for work surface
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 3/4 cups (3 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces, room temperature, plus more for bowl and loaf pans
• 2 1/4 pounds semisweet chocolate, very finely chopped
• 2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream

This makes three loaves, but we’re still talking 3/4 of a pound of chocolate per loaf, similar to a full bag of chocolate chips.  That’s got to have something to do with it.  Another variant from Su Good Sweets is Nutella Babka, which seems to mix in about 1/3 nutella with the chocolate.

Green’s babka is kosher, and depends on oil (palm, I hear) for fatty goodness, but that renders it parve, and allows it to be served more flexibly in kosher households.  A definite benefit for some that might impede the flavor for others.  I’ve never felt compelled to complain when my babka answers to a higher authority.

Should you find yourself in posession of a babka, be sure to warm it slightly before serving to bring the chocolate to the necessary state of gooeyness.

I should probably quit while I’m ahead, but I found a couple more babka notes that I must impart.  We’ve dwelled on chocolate babka so far, and while I won’t even mention the usual secondary or “lesser” babka variant, it appears that there are savory dishes also called babka.

Again, via wikipedia, there is the savory dish from Belarus and Lithuania: “It is made from grated potatoes, egg, onions, and smoked bacon. It is baked in a crock, and often served with a sauce of sour cream and pork flitch. Depending on recipe and cooking method it may be either a flaky potato pie, or a heavy potato pudding.”  Sounds delicious in its own right, but seems pretty far off from the sweet stuff, and awfully distant from anything kosher, too.

From Aloyada, we also have a Ukrainian fish babka, described as “…souffle-like. Which meant that when baked, it rose almost as much as a conventional souffle– but stayed puffed up and impressive. The egg yolks, milk, fried onion, bits of bread and stiff egg white give it a lovely light and very tasty texture; an aerated clear yellow omlette-style base in which the embedded pieces of fish and herbs (nutmeg and dill or tarragon) are delicious, subtle and moist.”  Also interesting, and maybe a little more likely to be related to the chocolate babka of ashkenaz.

Enticing as the savory options are, there will always be just one true babka for me, and unless I freeze some of it now, it’s not going to last till my next trip to New York.

I returned from New York City with a supply of foods hard to find elsewhere, including extra-salty belly lox, chocolate babka, and a bakers half-dozen bialys.

“Isn’t that the bagel’s bastard cousin?”

There’s not a retort icy enough for that one, so I just stayed silent. Feh, if others don’t appreciate them, there’s more bialys for me. I used to inquire at bagel places outside of New York City if they had bialys. The good answer was “no, sorry” the usual answer was “what?” and the worst answer turned out to be “sure” pointing to something that was definitely not a bialy. I stopped asking.

In this spirit of instructing all four kinds of child, this is a bialy:

It measures about 4 inches across, maybe 3/4 of an inch thick at the thickest to barely 1/8 inch in the thin center. The center contains some shredded onion, and in some versions, poppy seeds. It’s baked but not boiled (as bagels are) and has a crunchy upper surface and a chewy somewhat salty interior. Useful comparisons include pizza crust and English muffin, but not bagel. It was born in the 19th century in or around Bialystok, Poland. It does not come in cinnamon raisin or sundried tomato basil.

Where’s Bialystok? Deep in the heart of Ashkenaz, that’s where. Northeastern Europe, near the confluence of Poland, Lithuania and Russia/USSR/Belarus. The linguogeek should note that the “Bialy” in Bialystok might just be the same as the “Bela” or “Bylo” of Belarus/Bylorussia, which is бело, the slavic root for “white.”

The best explanation of why this is more than just a roll comes from Mimi Sheraton’s mouth-watering, stomach-churning and heartbreaking book, The Bialy Eaters: The Story of a Bread and Lost World, now also available as an ebook. This book inspires a great deal of navistalgia and should be required reading for bakers, gourmands and Holocaust scholars. The book is full of memories of pre-war Polish jews and the then-regional bialy, both now scattered around the world but absent in Poland.

For a taste of what’s in the book, see this transcript of an interview with Sheraton by Paul Solman of WGBH in Boston. For a hopeful if gaudy sign of the bialy’s future, check this out.