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Baba Au Rhum
Sift in a large bowl three ounces wheat flour, make a small fountain in the centre, place in it three-quarters of an ounce yeast, dilute with one and a half gills warm milk; briskly knead with the hand, gradually incorporating all the flour until a light dough, then set the bowl in a warm place to raise for thirty-five minutes.
Sift on a corner of a table five ounces flour. Make a small fountain in the centre, place in it two saltspoons salt, half gill cold milk, two ounces butter (not cold) and break in three eggs. Vigorously knead with the hand for ten minutes, lifting the batter from the table several times during the operation. Add now the first preparation to this batter; knead well for five minutes with the hand. Place the batter in a bowl, cover with a wet towel and lay it in a warm place of about 75 degree to raise for two hours. Add then three tablespoons Sultana raisins, well picked, and a gill cream; thoroughly mix with the hand. Lightly butter a quart pudding mould, drop in the batter, then let rest for fifteen minutes. Set in a moderate oven for one hour. Remove, let cool off and unmould on a deep dish.
Place in a small saucepan four ounces granulated sugar with half pint cold water and boil for five minutes; remove from the fire, add three tablespoons good rum, mix a little, then with a spoon gradually baste and rebaste the sauce over the baba and serve.
A yeast-raised baba built in two stages, in the French professional manner: a wet sponge first, then a rich butter-and-egg dough kneaded by hand on the table. The measurements are by weight and in gills, and the batter is far slacker than bread dough.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of warm milk is 3/4 cup, half a gill is 1/4 cup, and the gill of cream at the end is another 1/2 cup. Two saltspoons of salt is about 1/2 teaspoon.
- Flour by weightThree ounces of flour is roughly 2/3 cup, five ounces roughly a scant cup and a quarter. Weigh it if you can; with this much liquid the mixture stays far slacker than a bread dough, even though the recipe tells you to knead it by hand.
- The yeastThree-quarters of an ounce means fresh compressed yeast, about 21 g. Substitute 2 to 2 1/4 teaspoons of instant or active dry yeast, stirred into the warm milk.
- "Knead" means beatThis is a batter, not a dough. Lifting it from the table and slapping it down is the old way of developing gluten in a slack mixture; a stand mixer with the paddle for eight to ten minutes, or a stout wooden spoon, does the same work. It should become glossy and pull away in strands.
- Oven'Moderate oven' is usually taken as about 350F, though the book gives no temperature. A quart mould may not need the full hour at that heat in a modern oven; start checking at 40 minutes and take it out when a skewer comes clean and the centre reads about 190F.
- Soak it warmThis is the hinge. The instruction to cool the cake before basting works only if the syrup is still hot, and even then a fully cold baba absorbs poorly. Unmould while barely warm and spoon the hot syrup over in several passes, letting each soak in before the next.
- The syrupFour ounces of sugar is a generous 1/2 cup, half a pint of water is 1 cup. Five minutes at a boil gives a thin syrup; the rum goes in off the heat so less of the alcohol is driven off.
- YieldA quart mould serves six to eight. Serve the same day, with the excess syrup from the dish spooned over each slice, and whipped cream if you like.
The baba came into French pastry from Poland and Lorraine, where a tall yeast-raised cake studded with raisins was a festival standard; the name is commonly derived from the Polish and Slavic word for an old woman or grandmother, though the etymology is not settled. Tradition traces the rum-soaked version to the exiled Polish king Stanisław Leszczyński and his court at Nancy in the eighteenth century, and its Paris career to the Stohrer bakery, though both stories are repeated far more often than they are documented. What is clear is that the baba and its ring-shaped cousin the savarin were fixtures of the professional French repertoire, which is why the recipe reads like a kitchen note rather than a domestic one: weights in ounces, a proving temperature given as a number, and the assumption that the cook will beat a slack batter by hand for a quarter of an hour without complaint.