Chocolate Cinnamon Babke

This one didn't even last 24 hours out of the oven! This is the third of Peter Rienhart's test recipes and what a great one it was. Starts with a rich dough with four egg yolks, butter and sugar. This ferments for about 2 1/2 hours then gets rolled out into a square, about 1/8 inch thick. A mixture of chocolate, cinnamon and butter is spread over and the whole lot is then rolled into a log. I chose to join the ends of the log so it looked like a large donut with about a 2 inch hole in the middle. This can be a same day bake but I elected to hold it overnight in the refrigerator. After a final rise the loaf was baked at 300F for about 70 minutes. I tested the internal temperature and took it out when it reached 190F.

This is what it looked like out of the oven:



And then the final test - cut and eat!This would make a great alternate to a coffee cake or cinnamon buns. The combination of chocolate and cinnamon is a wonderful flavor.