Artisan Breads Every Day - Chocolate Cinnamon Babka

Christmas gave me the perfect excuse (like I needed one) to bake bread. More specifically, it gave me reason to try some more recipes in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day book. I hope to sort through some photos this week, so watch for a bunch of recipe reviews.

Most of the recipes in this book use a overnight refrigeration to develop the flavors. I found this method perfect for the holidays. The week before Christmas, I spent an afternoon mixing up batches of bread. My fridge was stuffed with bowls of dough that night! But I had all my cleanup done and ingredients out only one time! The next morning, I pulled out the first batch of dough and had time to get creative with the loaf shaping. Each time I slid a batch of bread in the oven, I pulled out another bowl of dough and shaped it. Besides keeping my head about me on which bread I was working on and how long it needed to rise and bake, it was an easy day! By evening, the table was full of loaves of bread and the house smelled wonderful! Then we had the fun of delivering fresh bread to friends and neighbors!

The Chocolate Cinnamon Babka was a fun bread. I made the recipe exactly as written (shocking, huh!) and the result was as good as it looks! I doubled the recipe so that I could have a loaf for us and a loaf to gift. If I would have realized how large a loaf this recipe makes, I would have made one batch and divided it in half. The dough is rich with lots of milk, butter and egg yolks - perfect for the holidays!

I used the Israeli Kranz cake shaping technique. I've used this method for other breads and am always pleased by how easy it is to make a stunning bread. You can use this method for any bread recipe, especially one with a filling spiraled in the center.
The bread dough was rolled into a large rectangle. The filling (chocolate, cinnamon and butter) was sprinkled in and the dough rolled up jelly roll style. The log was cute down the middle lengthwise.
The two pieces were rolled together to form a spiral and baked.

And the result - Yummy!