A Babka Walks Into a Brioche...

I practiced making brioche this weekend and made about 5lbs of dough. I did not, however, want 5 lbs worth of plain brioche. The original idea was to make pains au raisins (less-sweet versions of Cinnabuns), but that would've entailed a run to the grocery store for milk, raisins, apricot jam, rum, confectioner's sugar, and sliced almonds. And my brother and SO, who are expected to help consume my homework, don't even like raisins. So I improvised.

I made one plain 9x5 loaf for sandwiches this week (boy, is that gonna make a mean turkey sando!) With the rest, I took a chocolate babka recipe from Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread that I picked up while visiting Lana during the spring. The photo of the beautiful undulating dough beribboned by swirls of chocolate completely seduced me, and I've been looking for an opportunity to bake it for months. I hadn't been planning on it but I had all the ingredients on hand and it seemed like a good fit for my excess dough, so I crossed my fingers and switched the challah with my brioche. A mix of cocoa, cinnamon, sugar and melted butter is slathered on brioche dough, then walnuts and chocolate chips sprinkled on top. The dough is rolled up into a long tube like so...
Two rolls are each draped over a stick (I used a chopstick of course!) at their mid-point (I had some help here) and twisted so that one end is fat and the other thin. They then are arranged like a yin and yang sign...

....et voila! Chocolate walnut brioche. I winged it with the proofing and bake time/temp, but 30 minutes at 375 worked well. The shaped dough took about 1.5 hours to proof properly even in a warm kitchen because it was weighed down with all that filling. Our apartment now smells like good things and happy thoughts, and I can't wait to start my Sunday morning with a warm slice of it and some strong coffee. Talk about having sweet dreams tonight!