Spring Onion Babka

OK, I’m going to begin with something insanely good. I can barely believe how delicious this babka is!

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This dreamy bread is the tasty spring onion babka from Nicola Lamb’s Kitchen Projects a fantastic food newsletter that deep dives into the why’s and how’s behind new and old bakes. It’s of course nerdy, but it’s also fun and light, a real joy to read on a Sunday morning – I really recommend it! Anyway, back to the babka. If you’ve eaten Chinese Dim Sum, then you’ll probably be familiar with the dangerously addictive spring onion pancakes. Deeply savoury, lightly fried, and with a wonderful Umami taste – they never last long in my house when I whip them up (with thanks to this amazing recipe). I was so excited to find a recipe that combined the delicious burnt spring onion taste with light and fluffy babka bread.

Baking bread is my favourite thing to do, and I’ve already made many chocolate babkas. Most recipes are made with a brioche dough (very sweet, with lots of butter), but sometimes Milk bread aka. Shokupan is used. Shokupan is a Japanese white fluffy bread, that’s made with a roux (called Tangzhong). In my opinion the Shokupan dough is lighter, more delicate, and is much more suited to a savoury babka than the brioche as the soft texture is not aggressively sweet and as a result works with the spring onion filling instead of battling against it.

And wow, the flavour is incredible! The heady aroma comes from a burnt spring onion oil, that’s often used in Chinese dishes, and I can imagine it will soon be a staple in your kitchen too. It is so delicious, it would not only work in a simple noodle dish, but also be excellent over grilled vegetables or fish. If you don’t want to make the babka just yet, then please, please, try the oil – you won’t regret it!

The babka has a beautiful zebra pattern inside, that comes from rolling the dough into a sausage shape, cutting it in two parts, and then braiding them together. It sounds simple (!), but I often find it challenging as the dough is so paper thin that holes and rips can sometimes occur – not ideal when you’ve got quite a liquid filling! This time I was really happy that I didn’t completely destroy the dough, and I’m glad to say that it went pretty well. One tip – don’t be nervous about putting flour on your work surface – it helps the dough not to stick.

Spring Onion Babka Recipe

I’m just going to share the simple recipe here, and heartily encourage you to follow this link to Nicola Lamb’s method here (it’s free!) for the full version with GIFs and pictures.

Makes 2 x 450g/1lb tin size bake OR 1 x 900g/2lb Babka

Tangzhong (Roux):

• 50g water
• 50g milk
• 20g bread flour

Dough

• 55g milk
• 50g egg (1 egg)
• 5g dry yeast
• 230g bread flour
• 25g sugar
• 5g salt
• 20g soft butter

Burnt Spring Onion oil

• 250g chopped spring onion
• 60g light soy sauce
• 40g sugar
• 10ml sesame oil

You won’t be able to resist tasting the babka as soon as it comes out of the oven, but you only need it to cool down a little before it starts tasting amazing. The good news is, it will also be good for a good few days more, that’s if there is any left of course! I make two small ones and stick one in the freezer without issues.

I hope you find this bread as magical as I do, please let me know if you give it a try!

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