Sweet thoughts for Rosh Hashanah 5777

Tasting history

My eyes were the perfect height for viewing the treasures under the glass counter: Fruit-filled Danish pastries, Charlotte Russe, almond horns, mandlebrot (biscotti to you), raspberry rugelach, shnecken, strudel, cupcakes, fragrant loaves of challah and rye and warm bagels. The bakery lady always gave me a “nosh,” a cookie with sprinkles. I wasn’t allowed to sample any of the other treats until my grandparents arrived from the city and Mom set out a “spread.”

My family didn’t belong to a synagogue, and we were not kosher, so going to Moskowitz’s was the closest we came to worship. The Holy of Holies was the babka, a moist, aromatic, loaf cake containing luscious swirls of cinnamon, raisins, and almonds. My grandparents ate their babka with glasses, not cups, of hot tea while watching Meet the Press. For them, each morsel contained memories of the Old Country, which might’ve been Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, or Belarus. They weren’t sure. They had left as children at a time when the borders of Eastern Europe changed with the toss of a ruble.

Eventually, Jewish bakeries sprung up closer to us. Why schlep to 60th Street when there was the Rolling Pin in Wynnefield and Liss’s Bakery in Overbrook Park? Plus, the popular delis in Bala Cynwyd got wise and started selling these same bakery products. You could live in Montgomery County and have your babka too.

The great schlep

None of this mattered to me until my parents and grandparents passed away and, in time, Sundays no longer tasted right. The bakeries were gone, replaced by chain supermarkets. Then I heard Port Richmond was the place to go. Supposedly, according to Yelp, the babka in its Polish bakeries was “the best.” As I drove along a bleak strip of Allegheny Avenue, I had a feeling it would be easier to score meth than find a decent babka. Finally, I found a bakery, walked in, and left without buying anything. It didn’t look right. It didn’t smell right.

Searching for the perfect babka in 2016 is like searching for a phone booth. They don’t exist — or so I thought. On a recent stroll through East Passyunk, I happened upon Essen Bakery. The name alone was promising. Essen means “eat” in Yiddish. A new Jewish bakery in South Philly, walking distance from my grandparents’s former home? I might as well have stumbled upon Atlantis. Inside the tiny storefront (formerly Belle Cakery), I gazed at shiny loaves of braided challah, cookies the size of coasters, and two varieties of babka. Cinnamon and chocolate.

“I’ll take a cinnamon babka,” I said. (Chocolate babka is making a comeback, but I’m a traditionalist.)

“That will be $14,” said Tova du Plessis, the pastry chef/owner.

No problem. I would’ve paid $50. Her accent wasn’t local. I couldn’t place it.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“South Africa,” she said.

Perfection perfected

Intrigued, I probed deeper. Du Plessis’s grandfather came from Austria, the pastry capital of Europe. Her grandmother, like mine, came from Russia. But the actual recipe for her golden loaf wasn’t handed down.

“It’s my own creation,” she said.

The weight of the babka felt right, heavy as a brick. The aroma was tantalizing. Still, I withheld judgment until I arrived home. When I sliced it, it fell apart exactly the way it should. A babka that holds together doesn’t have enough of the “good stuff.” Here, at last, was a babka bursting with nuts and raisins. The outside had a thin, pleasing crunch. The inside was tender but firm. As a wine connoisseur would say, it had a good “mouth.” But something was different. For one thing, the babka of my childhood was filled with almonds. This one had pecans. Oodles of them. And there was something else. Perhaps honey?

No, this is not the babka of my childhood. This is better. For good reason. Du Plessis’s culinary credentials are stellar. She was the former executive pastry chef at Lacroix and earned her stripes at Le Bec-Fin and Zahav. As I savored her interpretation of a classic Jewish coffee cake, which conjured up Paris more than Kiev, I realized that while I cannot go back in time, I can be transported to a realm in which babka still reigns supreme.