Babas make a great dessert especially served with baked fruit. They keep well in the fridge. We will use Pate Fermentee (PF for short). In days gone by, bakers kept back a portion of dough each evening to start the dough off the following day. You may be familiar with pre-doughs in recipes where a portion of the flour is mixed with yeast and water and allowed to sit for a few hours. The PF replaces that. Sweet dough is very forgiving. You will end up with more PF than you need for this recipe, but this is the smallest practical amount to make. Use the remainder in another bread recipe adding 20% of the flour weight - no other change needed to your recipe. You can place the dough in the fridge and leave until you’re ready to do the next stage. Note that there is no water in this recipe, the eggs provide all the moisture.If you are not a fan of rum, orange liqueur is a great substitute
Plastic boxes to store dough (or use your stand mixer bowl and cover it)
Vegetable peeler
Citrus juicer
Dough scraper or plastic spatula
Metal spatula
Baking parchment or silicon sheet
Ingredients
Pate Fermentee
200gramsbread flour or Type 45 /Type 00
130millilitreswater
5gramsfresh yeast or half a sachet of quick action yeast
2gramssalt
Baba Dough
250gramsflour (Type 00 or Type 45)
100gramsPate Fermentee (PF)
75gramsbutter
25gramscaster sugar
150millilitreswhole egg about 3 eggs
5gramssalt
12gramsfresh yeastor 7 gr packet of fast action yeast
1eggfor egg wash
Extra butter and flour for the moulds
Rum and Citrus soaking mixture
1largeOrangezest peeled
1 lemonzest peeled
200millilitresgranulated sugar
200 millilitreswater
Rum to taste(approx 30 ml)
Instructions
Dough
Put the flour, PF, sugar, eggs, salt and yeast in your stand mixer bowl.
Using a dough hook, mix for 5 minutes on low speed and 5 minutes on medium speed.
Turn the speed back to low and add the butter in small lumps. To begin with, it will look as if it will mix in, it will!
Mix until the mixture comes away from the sides and the dough measures between 24 and 26°C. This is typically a further 5 minutes.
Leave at room temperature for an hour. Either place a plate on top of your bowl or put it into a plastic container with a lid. At this point you can put it in the fridge overnight or for a minimum of 3 hours.
Make the syrup: Using a peeler, peel the orange and lemon zest off the lemons (it will be easier to remove later). Juice the fruits. Place the sugar, water and juices into a saucepan. Place on a medium heat until the sugar has melted.
Set aside to cool leaving the peel in the syrup. When cool, add the rum a little at a time, tasting as you go. Do not allow the rum to dominate the orange flavour.
Remove the dough from the fridge. Divide the dough into six 60 gr pieces. You want your dough to reach 3/4 up the dariole mould. If you are using a different container, use 60-70 gr dough.
Roll the dough into balls. Then roll more heavily on one side so it will fit the mould.
Spray the mould with cake release spray or butter it very well and dust with flour.
Pop the dough into the moulds. Brush with egg. Leave to prove covered at room temperature for 1.5 hours. By this time it will be close to the top of the dariole moulds.
Pre-heat the oven to 180°C (170C if fan) 30 minutes before you need to use it
Place the moulds on a baking tray. Coat with beaten egg a second time.
Bake for approx 20 minutes. Check after 10 and 15 minutes. The dough will have risen well and the top will be golden. Check internal temperature of the baba is more than 90C.
Allow to cool before gently removing from the mould. Store in the fridge.
If you can, leave the babas until the next day before soaking. Put the syrup in a deep bowl removing the peel. Prick the babas all over with a sharp knife and soak in the syrup. You’ll probably need to do these two at a time.
Once they’ve soaked once, soak a second time. Serve warm with baked apples, plums or whatever fruit you wish!
Notes
A note about ingredients. Type 00 (Italian) and Type 45 (French flours) are milled very finely. Plain flour is not the same as it made with a softer wheat. Bread flour is a good substitute, but it will give a different texture. I use unsalted butter, but any butter will do. Any type of salt is fine. If you don’t have any rum in the cupboard, use what you do have. Any type of orange liqueur is great. Fresh yeast can be bought on Ocado, at the cake counter in many supermarkets or online. Otherwise buy instant yeast sachets.Adapted from a recipe by Valeria Necchio.