- Let's talk babka.
I keep wanting to make a "Seinfeld" reference,
but I keep getting the babka episode confused
with the marble rye episode.
No, they're two different, because Jerry gets the
babka because Elaine wants the babka and that's no good.
(voices overlapping)
He takes the babka and he runs. Oh Jerry.
- What's up guys, it's Lee Kalpakis from Thrillist, and today
we are at Breads Bakery in Union Square to try
their babka pie, because when you're in the mood for
babka and you're in the mood for pie,
you should never have to choose just one.
Let's go check it out.
- I think babka pie is the best thing you've ever
had in your life.
But aside from that, it is a laminated pastry, that's
engulfed with butter, a lot of butter, and we love butter
here at Breads Bakery, and we basically fill it with
Nutella and chocolate chips, roll it up, and it's just
delicious, flaky, and really chocolatey, and a little bit
gooey, and out of this world.
I think what makes babka so special is, again, taking that
traditional babka which our grandma made, and making
something new out of it.
You know, we don't want what our grandma made,
we want something that Breads Bakery makes.
So we combine that with more classic French pastry
techniques, so we're laminating the dough, which normally
the dough isn't laminated.
And we contrast that sweetness of the Nutella with some
chocolate chips, and the whole process basically shows
this kind of like tradition and innovation meeting.
Babka, for me, is comfort, it's warm, it's home
and I grew up in Israel, so, you know, eating babka
was part of our tradition.
I have to say though, that Breads Bakery makes something
that I've never had in my life, you know,
in a traditional manner, so it is a lot better
than the traditional form that I grew up on.
- OK guys, so here it is, the famous babka pie.
I'm gonna go for a big one, here we go.
OK so, right away I can tell that this babka is not
messing around. The swirls on this guy are huge.
And that's what you want, you want a big swirl, you want
a good ratio between the Nutella and the chocolate chips
and the dough. We're off to a very good visual start.
Here we go.
Right away, the first thing that you taste is the Nutella.
It's rich and decadent, it is so sweet, and the consistency
of the inside of the babka, it's moist and it's really tender,
it's delicate.
The outside, you have this like golden brown crust.
It's crunchy, it's flaky, it's everything that
you want from your babka.
And you can tell, from just the first bite, that this is
a tedious and long very detail oriented process.
You can taste all the different layers from the lamination
process, it's layer after layer.
There's a reason why this is the place for babka.
So when I think Nutella babka, I know that it can sometimes
get a little overpoweringly sweet, I love that they put
the extra chocolate chips in there.
The semi-sweet chocolate chips really balance out the
sweetness of the Nutella so you're getting a
whole other depth of the chocolate that
you don't just get with the Nutella.
There's almost a bitterness that makes you want to
eat more and more of it.
OK, so we're talking a lot of babka,
but this is a babka pie, right?
So let's get into this crust.
As you can see from just cutting into it, it's really flaky.
The crust is so crunchy and buttery.
You know, coming into this, I didn't really think it made
much sense to put a babka and a pie together, but now
that I'm eating it and now that I'm experiencing it,
I'm realizing that a key component in great pie and
great babka is a ton of butter, and it actually
marries the two together perfectly.
And I thought that this was going to be a pie that's just
like a babka filling, but that's not what's going on here.
That layer of Nutella and chocolate chips in between the
babka dough and the pie crust meld everything together,
so this is a total hybrid.
Babka becomes pie and pie becomes babka.
That little brush of simple syrup that they put on
the outside, it's just this little extra bit of sweetness
that plays perfectly with everything else
that's going on inside.
All right, well, I'm going to finish off the rest of my
babka, but if you guys like what you saw, don't forget
to check out Thrillist's new show, "Foodcasting," where I
cover natural wine, and of course, don't forget to
like, comment, subscribe. We'll see you on the next one.