The babà

Tastier than anything you could imagine, it is a dessert with a history. His origins are not in Naples like usually believed, it actually comes from Poland. The first babà dates back to king Stanislao’s reign – he was the father-in-law of the French king Louis XV – who liked to experimental cuisine.” One day Stanislao, after having many shots of rum – it says baba.it – found himself craving a good dessert. He craved something very special. When the butler served him yet another portion of kugelhupf, he petulantly pushed him away and threw the dessert.
The dish ended his race on a bottle of rum and crashed it. Before anyone could pick it up the rum had poured all over the kugelhupf. Stanislao’s still angry eyes witnessed the occurring of an extraordinary metamorphosis: the leavened dough changed his color to a warmer, amber shade and an inebriating fragrance started filling the room. Stanislao, as the servants watched dazzled , picked up the teaspoon and tried the novelty. The rest is history.
The mixture technique and the growth times are the secret for the perfect babà: it is kneaded and left to raise for a long time, cooked, removed from the plate and left to dry for a day before being immerged in a hot bath of sugar, rum, limoncello and other liquors. After soaking it wait at least two hours before serving. Let’s now move on to the babà dough recipe.

Ingredients:
300 g of soft wheat flour with high concentration of proteins like Manitoba, 3 biological eggs, I used 2 because they were very big, 100g of soft butter, 100g of milk, 25 f of sugar, 10g of beer yeast, ½ teaspoon of salt

Preparation:
Melt beer yeast in 50 grams of lukewarm milk and a teaspoon of sugar, mix and work with your hands while adding 70 grams of flour. Leave it to raise until its size doubles, help the process by putting it into a covered bowl in the oven with the light on. Once the volume of the dough has increased move it into the bowl of the mixing machine, add the remaining flour and yeast mixture plus the three aggs. Turn on the mixing machine and leave it on for a long time adding now and then a teaspoon of milk if needed, the dough needs to be elastic, not too hard not too soft. Add now sugar and butter without stopping the mixer, a lot of air needs to be pulled in. I left it mixing for more than 10 minutes and then put in the oven to grow more after covering the bowl with plastic wrap.
As soon as it doubled in size I filled the mono-portion babà-shaped plates after having put butter and flour to prevent them from sticking. Put little dough in each plate, do not exceed the half of the size and put the babà back in the oven to grow some more covering it with the plastic wrap now covered with butter. I baked for 20/25 minutes at 320°F, but it truly depends from your oven. For the rum cream: pout in a small pot 300ml of water, 160g of sugar and some lemon and orange skin, only the colored part, not the white one. Bring to boiling point and after a few minutes turn it off and add 200ml of rum. Make holes in your babàs a pour the hot liquid, perfumed of citrus essential oils, right over it. You will smell a yummy perfume coming from your babàs. Decorate the plate as you like with creams and/or fruits.

Recipe by Tamara Giorgetti

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