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Polish Cake. Baba
Requires 5 hours time to make, raise and bake. 1 pound of good, light roll dough. 1 1/4 pounds of butter. 6 ounces of sugar. 14 eggs. 1 pound of flour. 8 ounces of raisins. 6 ounces of currants. 4 ounces of citron. Half cup of brandy. Lemon and nutmeg extracts.
These cakes made with dough are all started alike. Warm the dough, butter and sugar together, mix and then set away half an hour, when the ingredients can be mixed better; then beat in the eggs two at a time and handfuls of flour alternately. Beat well; rise 2 hours. Beat again, add the flavorings, brandy and fruit. Line the cake moulds with buttered paper. Let the batter rise in the moulds about 2 hours, then bake, about an hour.
A yeast-risen fruit cake built on a piece of bread dough rather than on chemical leavening. The original gives no oven temperature and no yield, both of which need filling in.
- "Light roll dough"A pound of ordinary risen white bread or roll dough, taken at the point where it has doubled and is still soft. A bakeshop would generally have had some on hand; at home, make a batch or borrow a pound from a bread dough that uses about 3 cups flour. It supplies all the leavening, so it must be lively, not spent.
- Scale of the batter1 1/4 lb butter, 1 lb flour, 14 eggs and 1 lb 2 oz of dried fruit and citron make roughly 6 to 7 lb of batter. That is two large moulds or three medium ones, serving twenty-plus. Halving the recipe works cleanly; quartering leaves you with three and a half eggs.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A rich, deep, yeasted cake of this size wants a moderate oven, 325 to 350F, for the stated hour or a little more; higher and the crust sets long before the centre. Test with a skewer at the deepest point.
- The hinge: warm, not hotEverything is worked warm so the butter stays creamy and the yeast stays alive. Keep the dough, butter and sugar around 80 to 85F. Butter warmed past about 90F breaks and greases out, and the eggs must be at room temperature or the mixture will curdle when they go in.
- Beating in the eggsTwo eggs at a time alternating with handfuls of flour is deliberate: the flour absorbs the liquid and keeps the emulsion from splitting. A stand mixer with the paddle does this in a few minutes; do not rush the additions.
- Fruit goes in lastRaisins, currants, citron and brandy are added after the first two-hour rise. Sugar-heavy fruit and spirit both slow yeast, and adding them at the start would drag out the fermentation considerably.
- Lining the mouldsButtered paper means parchment now. Tall moulds are traditional for baba; a deep charlotte mould, a tall panettone paper or a tube pan all work. Fill no more than halfway, since the second rise in the mould runs two hours.
- Flavourings"Lemon and nutmeg extracts" were bakers' concentrated flavours. A tablespoon of lemon zest and half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg give the same effect with less alcohol carried into the batter.
- TimingThe five hours quoted is mostly waiting: half an hour of resting, two hours' bulk rise, two hours in the mould, an hour baking -- which in fact adds up to nearer five and a half. It cannot be compressed by warming the dough harder without coarsening the crumb.
Baba is the Polish and wider Central European yeast cake whose name means "old woman" or "grandmother" in Polish, generally explained by the fluted, skirted shape of the traditional tall mould. It was above all an Easter cake, baked rich with eggs and butter after Lenten fasting. The version here starts from a pound of ordinary roll dough already fermenting on the bench, which is why the author notes that "these cakes made with dough are all started alike" across a family of enriched yeast cakes. French pastry took the same cake in another direction as the baba au rhum, soaked in syrup, and it is often said that the Polish exile King Stanislas Leszczynski's court brought it to France in the eighteenth century, a story traditional rather than documented.