Double Black Sesame Babka - Tangzhong Method

The best way to spend a me day on a weekend? Bake! Bread baking to be exact. Just all day, bread and I. It takes time and patience to make bread, in fact, the proofing time alone took a total of 2 hours. But that's all hands off time, so you can be off to binge watch shows or just lay on the couch and scroll through years worth of feed on some stranger's instagram page.

This babka is very similar to making cinnamon rolls. Rather than cutting the rolls into individual pieces, you cut down lengthwise, reveal all the layers, braid the dough, and bake in a loaf pan. I rolled out my dough slightly too long for the pan and got 4 mini rolls out of the trimmed ends.

Since this recipe uses the tangzhong method (hydrate part of the bread flour with water prior to mixing with the dough), the resulting product came out similar to Asian style bread - super light and fluffy! Compared to traditional babka recipes, it also uses significantly less amount of butter in the dough to achieve these tender crumbs.

The black sesame flavor and aroma permeates the entire loaf with ground black sesame seeds mixed into the dough as well as in the filling. The filling has a slight hint of cinnamon which complements the black sesame flavor well. Next time, I will try a pure black sesame spread for the filling.