Home › Chafing-Dish Dainties › Baba
Baba
INGREDIENTS.
1 cake of compressed yeast. 1/2 a cup of water. 10 oz. of butter (1¼ cups). ¼ a teaspoonful of salt. 1/2 a cup of sugar. 8 eggs. ½ a cup of currants, sultanas or sliced citron.
Make a sponge of the yeast, softened in the water, and flour to knead. Knead the little ball of dough until elastic, and put into a small saucepan of lukewarm water. Meanwhile add the butter, sugar, salt and three of the eggs to the rest of the flour, and beat with the hand until all are evenly blended; then add the rest of the eggs, one after another. When the ball of dough rises to the top of the water and is light, remove from the water with a skimmer and beat it into the egg paste; beat for some minutes, then beat in the fruit. Turn the mixture into the mould or moulds, leaving room for the cake to double in bulk. Let rise in a temperature of 68° F. When nearly doubled in bulk, bake from twenty to fifty minutes.
A rich brioche-type yeast batter, leavened by the old trick of floating a small sponge ball in warm water. Almost everything here works as written; the gaps are the flour weight and the oven temperature.
- The flour is not quantifiedThe ingredient list gives no flour, yet the method calls for "flour to knead" and then "the rest of the flour." For a batter with 8 eggs and 10 oz butter, expect somewhere around 4 to 5 cups (about 1 lb 4 oz) total, but the original does not say, and the amount should be judged by feel: a soft, sticky batter that falls heavily from the hand rather than a kneadable dough.
- Compressed yeastOne cake of compressed (fresh) yeast is usually reckoned at about 0.6 oz, roughly equal to 2 1/4 teaspoons of active dry or instant yeast, though the size of period yeast cakes varied. Fresh yeast is still sold in some markets; dry yeast can be softened in the same half cup of water, warm rather than hot.
- Butter measure10 oz is 1 1/4 cups, or two and a half standard sticks. Have it soft enough to cream but not melted, or it will not blend evenly with the sugar and eggs.
- The floating spongeThe small ball of sponge dough is put into lukewarm water and left until it rises to the surface, which serves to show the yeast is lively and the sponge fully aerated. Keep the water lukewarm, in the region of 95-100F; water much above about 120F will begin to kill the yeast and the ball will not rise.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. A moderate oven, 350F, suits a batter this rich; the crust colours quickly because of the sugar and eggs, so tent with foil if it darkens before the centre sets.
- Why twenty to fifty minutesThe wide range is a matter of mould size. Small individual babas are done in 20 to 25 minutes; a single large mould takes 45 to 50. Test with a skewer to the centre rather than by time.
- Rising temperature68F is a cool room, and deliberately so. A slow rise keeps the butter from weeping out and gives better flavour; expect two hours or more for the batter to nearly double.
- FruitSultanas are golden raisins; currants here means dried Zante currants, not fresh berries. Candied citron is still available around the winter holidays but is otherwise a specialty item.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield or mould shape, only the instruction to leave room for the cake to double in bulk; the batter will fill one large mould or a number of small ones. Babas are traditionally served soaked in rum or kirsch syrup after baking, which this recipe leaves to the cook.
The baba came into French pastry from Poland and eastern Europe, where enriched yeast cakes studded with raisins were long-standing festive baking; the name is often traced, on traditional rather than documented grounds, to the court of the exiled Polish king Stanislas Leszczynski in Lorraine in the eighteenth century, and the same lineage produced the ring-shaped savarin. What makes this version notable is that an American household book reproduces the professional French method of proving a sponge ball in warm water, at a period when chemical leavens were increasingly displacing yeast in home cake-making; the specified 68F rise reflects that attention to measurement.