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Baba
Sift four pounds of dried flour onto a marble or slate slab, put a quarter of it into a basin, and pour in the center one ounce of German yeast dissolved in a teacupful of warm water. Mix well with the fingers, adding a little more water if required to make a stiff paste. Roll into the shape of a ball, and again place in the basin, score it on top in the form of a cross, set in a warm place, and let the dough rise for about ten minutes, or until it is quite light. Make a cavity in the center of the three pounds of flour, adding two and a half pounds of butter, slightly warmed, half an ounce of salt and half a teacupful of water, together with fifteen eggs. Work the eggs and butter well together, then mix the whole into a paste, keeping it rather soft. In a few minutes, add six more eggs singly, and work lightly with the hand for ten minutes, sprinkling a teaspoonful of powdered saffron over the dough, and mixing it in. Put four ounces of Smyrna and eight ounces of Malaga raisins, together with four ounces of cleaned currants, and a small quantity of mixed candied peels cut into thin slices into a basin, pour over a breakfast cupful of Madeira wine and three wineglassfuls of brandy or rum, whichever may be preferred, and let these ingredients soak for a few minutes. Then mix them all in with the paste, using the hand lightly, and allow it to stand for a few minutes. Put a strip of paper about three inches above the rim of a well-buttered mould, pour in the mixture to about three-quarters the height of the mould, and set it in a warm place, and when the paste has risen to the top of the mould, place in a slack oven and bake until done, say about three hours. Turn out carefully onto a sieve, and serve either hot or cold. Care should be taken not to have the paste too thin, or the fruit will fall to the bottom of the cake, and the effect will be lost. As the fruit in some cakes has a tendency to stick to the mould when cooked, the latter may be masked with a coating of plain paste before placing the mixture in it.
This is hotel-scale baking: four pounds of flour, two and a half pounds of butter and twenty-one eggs would fill several large moulds. Everything below assumes you will cut it down before you begin.
- Scale it down firstQuartering the recipe gives 1 lb flour, 10 oz butter, 5 eggs and roughly 4 oz of fruit, which fits one large tube or kugelhopf mould. Even so the dough is close to a brioche in richness and will need a stand mixer or a good deal of patient hand work.
- German yeastThis means fresh compressed baker's yeast. One ounce of it corresponds to roughly 1/3 oz instant or about 1/2 oz active dry yeast for the full batch, so well under a teaspoon of instant for a quarter batch.
- Dried flourFlour was warmed and dried near the range to drive off damp cellar moisture. Room-temperature modern flour needs no such treatment, though warm flour does help a very buttery dough take up yeast.
- The rising times are far too shortThe rising times are short -- Ten minutes is optimistic for the sponge, though the recipe hedges it with 'or until it is quite light'; for the final rise the recipe gives no time at all, only 'when the paste has risen to the top of the mould.' Expect 45 minutes to an hour for the sponge and two to three hours in the mould; butter and fruit both slow fermentation badly. Judge by the dough reaching the rim, not by the clock.
- A slack ovenAbout 300F. At that temperature a single quarter-batch cake takes closer to 60 to 80 minutes than three hours; the original three-hour figure belongs to a mould holding several pounds of batter. A skewer should come out clean and the center should read 190 to 200F.
- SaffronThe teaspoon of powdered saffron is for the full four-pound batch; scaled down it is 1/4 teaspoon, and even that is heavy for one cake. A generous pinch, steeped in a spoonful of warm milk, gives the yellow crumb that is the point of it.
- The raisinsSmyrna raisins are Turkish sultanas; Malaga raisins are large seeded muscats, now sold as muscat raisins. Ordinary golden raisins and dark raisins substitute without loss.
- Keep the dough stiffThe warning at the end is the hinge of the recipe. A slack, wet dough lets the soaked fruit sink into a sodden band at the base. Drain the fruit well after its wine-and-brandy soak and add it only when the dough is elastic enough to hold it.
- The paper collar and the mouldThe three-inch paper band is a collar to support the dough as it rises above the rim; parchment secured with kitchen twine does the same job. Rather than "masking with plain paste," butter the mould heavily and dust it with flour or fine crumbs so the sugary fruit does not weld itself to the metal.
- ServingA quarter batch gives one cake serving 10 to 12. It is dry by modern taste on its own; babas were often sent to table with a rum or Madeira syrup spooned over, or with a fruit compote, though this one is directed simply 'either hot or cold.'
The baba belongs to the family of enriched yeast cakes that runs from the Polish and Ukrainian babka through the Alsatian kugelhopf to the French baba au rhum; the name is generally taken to mean "grandmother," from the squat, skirted shape of the tall fluted mould. The story most often repeated traces the French version to the exiled Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński and his court at Lunéville in the eighteenth century, with the Paris pastry house Stohrer credited with popularizing the rum-soaked form ra traitional attributions rather than documented ones. What is certain is that by the 1890s the baba was standard grand-hotel work, and this version reads like a European pâtissier's formula copied into English: weights in pounds, yeast in ounces, eggs counted in fifteens and sixes, saffron for color at a time when it was still used as a baking tint, and dried fruit steeped in Madeira and brandy.