Peanut butter and jelly has been a favorite combination of mine since I was a little kid. I used to eat pb&j in some capacity almost every day growing up. It’s just so comforting and delicious. If you’ve been following along, you might know already that I’m obsessed with peanut butter. If you are too, you should check out this other recipe for Peanut Butter Banana Bread Squares! Anything with peanut butter is delicious, but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are a perfect food to me. So I decided to put it into a babka so every slice is like a perfect pb&j. This Peanut Butter and Jelly Babka is so moist and seriously delicious!
To make this babka – I use my traditional brioche recipe (so the same base recipe I use for cinnamon rolls!) with the change being that I add buttermilk and powdered peanut butter to the dough. When the dough is mixing, you can really smell the peanut butter – it’s so amazing! To make the dough, you will first combine the warm buttermilk, sugar, salt and yeast together in the bowl of your stand mixer. If you are using active dry yeast, you have to let the yeast activate so wait for your mixture to bubble before moving to the next step. Then you will add the eggs, vanilla, and butter. Beat to combine.
Your batter will look a little strange before you add in your flour, but it will come together once you add in the dry ingredients. Add in your flour and peanut butter and beat to combine until a dough forms. Once you have a dough, switch from the beater attachment to the dough hook and knead the dough until a smooth ball of dough forms.
Set the dough aside, covered at room temperature, until the dough doubles in size. Once the dough has doubled, generously flour a work surface or use a Silpat to roll out the dough. You don’t need to roll out the dough as thinly as you would for a cinnamon roll, so about 1/4 inch thick is good.
Once the dough is rolled out, cover in a layer of creamy peanut butter all the way out to the edges. But leave a little bit of uncovered space at the far end of the dough so you can easily seal the dough after you roll it up. Add a layer of strawberry jelly on top of the peanut butter. Once your dough is fully covered, carefully roll the dough up as tightly as you can and then seal the dough by pinching the edges together.
Fold the dough in half by bringing the ends together. Then fold the around each other to create the shape below. Once your babka is formed, move into a loaf pan that has been prepared by lining it with parchment paper. Let the dough proof until the loaf has gotten noticeably larger. While the dough is proofing, preheat the oven to 350F. Once the dough is ready, brush it will egg wash and then bake for 40-45 minutes until fully baked. Using the parchment paper overhang, pull the dough out of the loaf pan and transfer to a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely before slicing.
And there you have it – a Peanut Butter and Jelly Babka! Enjoy on it’s own or go really crazy and use it make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!
Peanut Butter and Jelly Babka
Equipment
- Loaf pan
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 1 cup plus 2 tbsp buttermilk warm, about 115F
- 2.25 tsp instant yeast (can also use active dry)
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter room temperature, cut into 1 tbsp cubes
- 2 large eggs room temperature
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup powdered peanut butter
For the filling:
- 3/4 cup smooth peanut butter
- 3/4 cup strawberry jelly
- 1 whisked egg, for egg wash
Instructions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the beater attachment, combine the yeast, buttermilk, salt, and sugar. If you are using active dry yeast instead of instant yeast, set aside and allow the yeast to bubble or see some movement.
- Add the eggs, butter, and vanilla. The batter will look really strange, it will be mostly liquid with tiny little balls of butter. But that’s okay! You just want to break things down and combine as much as possible before you add your flour. The dough will come together really nicely once you add your flour!
- Add your flour and powdered peanut butter and continue to mix on medium speed until a soft dough has formed. Make sure that you fluff and scoop your flour when measuring in your cups. You don’t want to pack the flour into the measuring cups, or your dough will be too stiff. The dough should be slightly sticky but very workable.
- Switch from the beater attachment to the dough hook and allow thedough to knead until a smooth ball has formed.
- Once the dough is finished kneading, remove the dough hook and leave the round ball of dough in the bowl.
- Cover the bowl of dough with a kitchen towel and set aside in a warm place to double in size. This will depend on several factors, including the temperature of your kitchen, the temperature of the milk you used, how you chose to knead your dough, etc. but this generally takes about an hour for me. But I keep our house pretty warm! So focus more on the dough doubling in size, and less on the timing. I like to take a picture of the dough before I set it aside so I can compare it to what it looks like later to make sure it has truly doubled.
- When you poke the dough and the imprint of your finger mostly remains, but springs back slightly, the dough is ready to be rolled. If the fingerprint fills in quickly and all of the way, let it continue rising. If the fingerprint doesn’t spring back at all, the dough is overproofed. You can still continue on with the recipe, but the dough may be a little tougher than you would want.
- While you wait for the dough to proof, prepare a loaf tin by spraying it with cooking spray and lining the tin with a sheet of parchment paper. You want the parchment paper to hang over the edges a bit so you can easily pull your babka out of the tin when its done baking.
- Once your dough has doubled, turn the dough out on a generously floured surface (if you have a nonstick pastry mat like a silpat, this is your moment to use it!)
- Flour the surface of the dough and rolling pin, and roll the dough out to a large rectangle. The larger the better, because it means more swirls! About a 1/4 inch thick is ideal for this recipe.
- Using an offset or rupper spatula, spread your peanut butter evenly over the dough out to the edges. Top with the jelly in an even layer.
- Roll the dough as tightly as you can from the wider end. Start off really slowly and work your way across the dough so you can keep your spirals tight.
- Then bring the two ends of the roll together by folding in half and twist the ends around eachother to form a signature babka swirled shape. (Photos in the blog post)
- Place the dough in the prepared loaf tin. Cover and set aside to proof for another 45 minutes or so, until doubled in size or noticeably larger.
- While the dough proofs, preheat the oven to 350F and place the oven rack in the middle position.
- Once the babka has doubled, brush the top with egg wash (a whisked egg and a bit of water). You can skip this step if you wnat, it just adds a really pretty shine to the outside of the babka.
- Bake for about 40-45 minutes, until the outside is golden brown and the bread is fully cooked through. If you have an instant read thermometer, the inside of the bread should measure about 185F.
- Once the babka is cooked, let it cool in the pan slightly and then lift the parchment paper out of the loaf tin and transfer the babka to a cooling rack.
- Let it cool completely before slicing. Then enjoy!!
