I actually never made babka before making it for this specific recipe. I really just was inspired to make it because I love using yeast-leavened doughs, and this one seemed really fun and playful to make, with all of the different layers of bread and chocolate. Traditionally, babka is like a brioche that is layered with a chocolate cookie-ganache mixture. I wanted to do something a little different, because I didn’t want to buy chocolate cookies just to crush them into crumbs(that seemed like kind of a waste), so instead, I went with making frangipane instead! Frangipane is an Italian almond cream that is made with almond meal, eggs, and butter, and it’s baked, so I knew that I could use that to make the chocolate layer and it would hold in a dough even after baking. I wanted to glaze my babka too, just to help with hiding those beautiful layers so that cutting into it would be a surprise, so I went with miso de leche, which is mixing miso and dulce de leche together into a luxurious salted caramel. Overall, this pastry is a very rich one, and it can guarantee food coma induction in about 1-2 bites.

For the brioche:
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup milk
1 packet dry-active yeast
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
a pinch of salt

Melt together the butter and your milk. Whisk your eggs into that and take about 1/4 of that mixture and continue whipping it until it comes down to about 100 degrees F and then add in your yeast and sugar. Allow that mixture to become foamy. Combine all of your ingredients together and knead until the dough is smooth and supple. Allow it to sit while you work on the frangipane.

For the chocolate frangipane:
1 cup almond meal
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup dark chocolate chips, melted
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 egg

Combine ingredients into a paste. Roll out your brioche dough to about a 12 x 10 inch rectangle and spread on your chocolate mixture. Roll into a scroll along the width and cut the scroll in half, lengthwise. Transfer to a sheet tray and begin overlaying your strands of dough, and rearrange it almost into the shape of a ring or wreath. Allow to sit for 1 hour at room temperature. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F and bake the dough for 35-40 minutes, or until the internal temperature of the dough reaches 200 degrees F. Remove and glaze with the miso de leche.

For the miso de leche:
3/4 cups dulce de leche
3 tablespoons miso paste
water as needed

In a pot, whisk the ingredients together, thinning out with water as needed until the miso is integrated in. Bring onto heat and whisk on medium-high heat until the mixture thickens back to the same consistency that the dulce de leche was at originally. Take off heat and using an offset spatula, spread onto the still warm babka to finish, allowing the glaze and babka to set together. Once cooled down, garnish with fleur de sel or dark chocolate shavings as desired.