Baba

History

The babà's most-repeated origin story credits Stanisław Leszczyński, the exiled Polish king living in Lorraine, who is said to have found the dry Alsatian kugelhopf wanting and had it moistened with sweet wine. His pastry chef Nicolas Stohrer is traditionally said to have refined the idea and later switched to rum, carrying the sweet to Paris after Leszczyński's daughter Maria married Louis XV; sources place his first sale between about 1730 and 1735. The name traces to the Polish word baba, meaning "old woman"; a competing tale holds that Leszczyński, taken with the tales of "One Thousand and One Nights," named the cake after the character Ali Baba. Naples embraced the cake only later, brought into aristocratic kitchens by the French-trained monsù chefs who cooked for the city's nobility in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; Neapolitans adopted it as their own and gave it the deep rum soak now associated with the babà napoletano. Artusi's version stands before that transformation: rum and Marsala flavor the dough itself, the cake is baked in a ribbed copper mold and served cold, unsoaked.

Ingredients

• g Hungarian or superfine flour
• g butter
• g powdered sugar
• g sultana raisins
• g Malaga raisins
• g brewer's yeast
• dl milk or, better, cream
• eggs
• tbsp Marsala
• tbsp rum or cognac
• g candied peel
• pinch salt
• vanilla

Instructions

1. Knead the yeast with a quarter of the flour and warm milk into a firm dough, cut a cross, and let it rise near gentle heat about half an hour.
2. Work the eggs with the sugar, add the remaining flour, risen dough, melted butter, Marsala and rum; work to a batter that leaves the bowl, then add raisins and candied peel and let rise.
3. Stir, pour into a buttered fluted mold (double the volume), cover, and let rise 2+ hours until doubled to the rim.
4. Bake, test with a straw until dry, and dry a little longer in the oven; unmold, dust with icing sugar, and serve cold.