Olive oil challah dough is rolled out like babka and filled with jam for deliciously sweet and fluffy buns you want in your life!
These hot buns are just as perfect as breakfast treats as they are for an afternoon snack or post dinner dessert!
Filippo Berio's Extra Light Olive Oil adds a delicate and subtle hint of olive making these making these buns more savory and delectable!
Use any jam filling of your choice! Or jelly. Or preserves. Or really anything that’s spreadable. Wanna experiment with Nutella or peanute butter? Go right ahead! The spreadable skies the limit!
The deliciously sweet olive oil challah dough recipe and instructions remain the same, regardless of filling. You do you and let’s make some fun and twisty babka dough buns!
Why this Recipe Works
- Homemade olive oil challah dough! With just a few simple ingredients, quickly and easily whip up challah dough from scratch!
- Customizable! Use any spreadable filling if your choice!
- Enjoy any time of day! The buns are equally at home in the morning, afternoon and night.
What is Challah
Challah is a special braided egg bread traditionally eaten by Jews on Shabbat and other Holidays. References to challah can be traced to the late 1400's in Judaic text.
The simple dough is commonly made with eggs, water, flour, yeast, oil, sugar and salt. And there are infinite variations! From cinnamon raisin to poppy seed to my personal go-to of sumac & za’atar. Challah comes in all sorts of sweet and savory ways.
It’s also made in various sizes and shapes, all of which have meaning in the Jewish tradition.
The Secret Trick to Really Good Challah
LET HER RISE!!! The dough needs time to chillax. You can do anything else you want during this time. The dough sits in a bowl, the gluten and yeast work, and the dough doubles in bulk. Non-negotiable step and all it requires is time.
In the last few years pre-COVID, I regularly hosted shabbat (Fri night dinner) always making challah from scratch that morning. I’d prepare massive feasts and it continuously blew people away that I’d make also make bread from scratch!
It’s actually wayyyyy easier than it may appear. I begin the dough in the food processor (I don’t have a stand mixer, which works too) and finish kneading by hand. If you have neither, pure elbow grease works too!
What is Babka
Originating in the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine, babka is a bread or cake made with a sweet yeast dough that’s wrapped around a filling that’s twisted, creating those spectacularly quintessential babka swirls. Originally it was developed in Jewish communities in the 19th century, explicitly as a way to use up extra challah dough.
Jewish immigrants brought babka, also known as Kranz Cake, to NY, where this childhood staple of mine exploded in popularity in 2010.
Babka is most commonly sweet and the filling ranges from chocolate to cinnamon to jam but savory babka (such as pesto-sundried tomato) is possible too!
I’ve had a *HUGE* diversity of babka at my holiday table - ranging from dry & crumbly to buttery & cakey to more bread like babka. While there are all sorts of differences in the dough, the essential shared babka trait is those dreamy swirls.
My Heritage & Filippo Berio
When Filippo Berio asked me to develop a recipe inspired by my heritage, my mind started racing a million miles a minute… ALL THE POSSIBILITIES!!!
I am a Mexican Jew.
My 4 grandparents are Eastern Europeans while both my parents are Mexican. My grandparents came from Austria, Poland and Ukraine and moved to Mexico City, in the 30s and 40s, due to persecution in their country of origin. My parents were born, raised and married in Mexico City, moving to Cali in their 20’s.
Our everyday food was Mexican. Our Holiday food was Jewish, but with a Mexican twist (such gifelta fish a la Veracruz or matza ball soup with avocado chilies).
Comfort food was just as much a quesadilla as chicken noodle soup in my household.
My cousin, Fany, was highlighted in this epic piece about our grandmother, heritage and Mexican-Jewish cuisines in the NY Times.
I grew up mostly in California, with a parts of my childhood in Mexico City, and then lived in Israel for 6 years in my 20’s and am currently back in Cali, fusing all the flavors with a local and seasonal Cali twist.
How to Make this Recipe
To Make the Challah/Babka Dough: Proof yeast in water with sugar, add rest of wet ingredients and whisk, add dry ingredients to the bowl of a food processor and slowly drizzle in the wet until a ball is formed, finish kneading on the counter and let the dough rise.
To Assemble the Challah/Babka Buns: Divide dough into 8 balls, roll each ball out, spread will filling, roll up jelly log style, make your babka twist, tie twists into knots, lets knots rise again and bake.
It’s a deliciously messy process!
Bread baking is an art, not a science!
The key is to give the dough enough time to double in size. Exact time varies from 40min – 2hrs- dependent on the weather and other conditions.
Ingredients
Olive Oil: Filippo Berio Extra Light Olive Oil adds a delicate and subtle hint of olive, creating a more savory dough.
Flour: This recipe calls for bread flour, which is necessary to get those perfect light, airy and slightly chewy. All-purpose flour will work as well, simply be less fluffy.
Whole wheat and other flours will change the dough but feel free to experiment with these if that’s your jam!
The recipe starts with 3 cups and with an additional cup measured out. The exact amount of flour needed will vary with the size of the egg and the weather. For example, a bit more flour will be needed when it’s rainy.
Egg: Eggs are a quintessential ingredient in challah, also known as egg bread. However, if you’re vegan, simply omit the egg and follow the rest of the direction. The dough will not be a classic challah dough, but the resulting buns will still be very delicious!
Water: is used to activate the yeast. Technically, water and beer can be used instead. If you experiment with either, please tell me all about it in the comments below!
Yeast: This recipe uses dry yeast – not to be confused with quick yeast for bread machines.
Active dry yeast is sold in packets or small jars and must be proofed in water before using. The liquid will begin bubbling after 5-10 minutes and that how you know the yeast is still alive. This yeast is what causes the bread to rise.
Sugar: sugar provides our dough with a delectable sweetness and is also fed to the yeast to proof it. The recipe calls for granulated sugar but feel free to experiment with any kind of sugar or swap honey in instead!
Jam: Any flavor works! Jam, jelly, preserves, store-bought or homemade! The sweet spreadable filling is what gives our babka those quintessential awesome babka swirls!
The key is to spread da layer of filling on our dough and the exact filling can be at your own discretion.
Mexican Cinnamon: Most of what we call cinnamon in the US is from Indonesia and also known as cassia. It’s harsh and brash and bold and sweet and spicy. Whereas in Mexico, the common cinnamon, Ceylon, which is from Sri Lanka (knows as Canela there). Commonly called “real” cinnamon, it is much more mellow and subtle, far less spicy with warmer floral notes. As a homage to my Mexican heritage, canela is used but any type of cinnamon can do in a pinch (or even be omitted).
Cooks Tips
- Not all flour is created equal! For the fluffiest results, use bread flour (flour with high gluten content).
- LET HER RISE! Giving the challah dough time to double in bulk is non-negotiable.
- Use the freezer! Pop the dough in to chill if it gets too warm and hard to work with.
- No perfection necessary! Embrace the deliciously messy process!
Have ya tried this recipe? I’d love to hear about it and see it too! Please leave a comment below and take a pic and tag it on Instagram with @DanielaGerson. You can also follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest to see more colorfully delicious food and all sorts of awesome adventures!
Let’s make waves in the kitchen!
*This post is sponsored by Filippo Berio. All the views in it are my own.
Stoked on Filippo Berio Olive Oil? Me too! Check out this Olive Oil Strawberry Cake with Ricotta & Cornmeal I created for them too!
Challah Babka Buns
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cup warm water
- 1 package 2 slightly heaping teaspoons dry yeast
- ½ cup of sugar + ½ teaspoon
- 1 egg room temperature
- ½ teaspoon of vanilla
- 2 ½ tablespoons Filippo Berio Extra Light Olive Oil
- 1 ½ teaspoon of salt
- 1 ½ Mexican Cinnamon/Canela
- 3 cups bread flour + 1 more cup measured out
- ½ cup jam – any flavor or a combination
Instructions
- Whisk together warm water, yeast and 1/2 teaspoon of sugar to activate the yeast; wait 5 minutes until it bubbles.
- Add 1 egg, vanilla and olive oil to the liquid yeast mixture.
- In the bowl of a food processor or stand mixer, add the salt, sugar, cinnamon and 3 cups of flour. Slowly add the liquids to the flour mixture and begin processing until a ball is formed. If needed, add the last cup of flour, ¼ cup at a time.
- Dust counter with flour and finish kneading on the counter with a little flour. The dough will be a little sticky.
- Oil a large bowl, add dough, cover with dish towel or plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour. Punch dough down and let it rest for 5 minutes.
- Divide dough into 8 balls. Using a rolling pin and your hands, roll each ball into a rectangle, roughly 4-5’ wide and 7-8’ tall. No shame in using a measuring tape or just eye-balling. If the dough gets too warm and hard to work with, simply put it back in the fridge/freeze to chill.
- Spread 1 tablespoon of the filling in an even layer over the dough rectangles, leaving about a ½’ bare boarder around the edges. Starting at the long edge nearest you, tightly roll up each rectangle horizontally jelly roll style into a tight log. Pinch ends and seal, dough will be quite soft at this stage, roll log out until a uniformed shape is made; transfer log to freezer. Repeat with the other pieces of dough. Let each log piece chill in freezer, at least 15 minutes (to ease with the babka bun assembly).
- Oil a muffin tin (possible to also bake the buns directly on a baking sheet).
- To assemble the buns: cut the roll in half lengthwise, leaving the tip of the log intact, so the striations of the dough and filling are visible. Kitchen scissors work best, a pizza cutter or a very sharp knife work as well. You will have 2 long pieces that are connected on one end. With the cut sides facing up, twist both pieces together. To twist, lift the right half over the left half, followed by the left half over the right half and keep repeating making a 2 stranded plait, then press the bottom end together to seal both pieces. Put each twisted piece back in freezer to chill again before forming the buns.
- Note: twisting the dough will get messy and jam will ooze out – there’s no way around this but worry not it is part of the process. Just hold the dough together as best you can (the freezer is your best friend here – put the dough back to chill if it gets too difficult to work with.
- When ready to assemble the buns, tie each twisted dough into a knot, tucking the two ends of the knot’s underneath itself. Transfer knots to muffin tin and repeat with all the remaining logs. Let rise for an hour.
- When ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Brush the tops of the buns with the remaining ½ tablespoon of olive oil (can also add any jam that’s falling out to the tops of the buns).
- Transfer to oven and bake for 18-22 minutes, until lightly golden brown.
Notes
- Not all flour is created equal! For fluffiest results, use bread flour (flour with high gluten content).
- LET HER RISE! Giving the challah dough time to double in bulk is non-negotiable.
- Use the freezer! Pop the dough in to chill if it gets too warm and hard to work with.
- No perfection necessary! Embrace the deliciously messy process!
Jacqueline says
This are so original!
Love the idea of making them small and with different jams!
Thanks for the inspiration, can’t wait to bake them 🙏😘
Daniela Gerson says
You are too cute Jacqui! Thanks so much for the super sweet feedback! I cant wait for ya to bake them either! Let me know how it goes :-):):)! 💜😘
Sam says
I like to have the recipe in grams more accurate
Daniela Gerson says
Appreciate the feedback Sam! Feel free to convert if you'd like :).