Babà: the recipe

Name: Babà
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 5 h 8 min
Yield: 25 pieces of 54 g
Ingredients: 500 g Wheat flour; 60 g Honey; 550 g Eggs; 10 g Salt; 3 g Lemon zest; 200 g Butter; 20 g Yeast; 400 g Sugar; 500 g Water; 3 g Lemon zest; 3 g Vanilla bean; 1 g Ground cinnamon; 125 g Rum

The masterpiece of Neapolitan pastry: a leavened cake with a fine, even crumb, incredibly soft and soaked in a rich, aromatic rum syrup.

Portioned into the classic truncated-cone moulds, it rises to the rim before being baked at a sustained temperature to develop its characteristic golden dome.

Once cool, it's fully dipped in a hot syrup of sugar, water, citrus zest and rum, then glazed with gelatine or apricot jam.

This recipe is freely inspired by, or adapted from, the balance of Maestro Iginio Massari.

At a glance

Number of pieces: 25
Weight per piece: 54 g
Actual dough weight: 1343 g
Room temperature: 22 °C

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Ingredients

Quantities for 25 pieces of 54 g, kitchen at 22 °C

Impasto

Wheat flour (W400)500 g
Honey60 g
Eggs550 g
Salt10 g

Lemon zest3 g
Butter200 g
Yeast20 g

Bagna

Sugar400 g
Water500 g
Lemon zest3 g

Vanilla bean3 g
Ground cinnamon1 g
Rum125 g

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Method

Impasto (40 min)
- Mix the flour, honey, half the eggs, the salt and the lemon zest until it forms a dough.
- Add the remaining eggs and, last, the butter together with the yeast.
Riposo (15 min)
Formatura (38 min)
- Fill the buttered molds to 1/3 of their height.
Lievitazione finale (3 hours)
- Let rise at 24-26°C (for example in the oven, switched off, with just the light on) until the dough reaches the rim of the mold.
Cottura (20 min)
Bagna (15 min)
- Bring all the ingredients except the rum to a boil; off the heat, once the syrup has cooled down, add the rum.
- Soak the babà until well soaked through.

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Baking

- conventional oven, without steam
- Overall temperature: 210 °C
- Time: 10 minutes
- conventional oven, without steam
- Overall temperature: 180 °C
- Time: 10 minutes

The calculator adapts baking times to the weight of your pieces. Open the calculator

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