Sourdough Chocolate Babka

Since we first built our starter, we have been dreaming of making a sourdough babka. Its amazing how though, we had never eaten a babka or even seen one other than the photos we drooled over on Instagram, we had a single minded conviction to make this sweet, twirly bread. Legend has it that babka means “little grandmother” in Ukrainian because grandmothers made it by twisting leftover scraps of challah bread with seeds and nuts, or because the twists in the bread looked like a grandmother’s pleated skirt. All we can confirm is that it tastes as delicious as it looks. It is a bit of work to braid the dough and we needed both of us to criss cross the strands of the filled dough to get it into the shape we wanted, but it is well worth the effort for the wonderful bread that comes out of the oven.