Saturday Bake-Along Recap: Babka Saturday, April 11, 2026

Henry Hunter

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Apr 12 • 🥖 Saturday Bake Along

Saturday Bake-Along Recap: Babka Saturday, April 11, 2026

Week 5 | Crust & Crumb Academy

That Night, Someone Brought Babka to a Hospital Room

@Jen Dolan

's Saturday started on fire. Her aunt was in the ER. Her son forgot his cleats. Her husband was scrambling. She barely got her dough started, so she improvised: Nutella mini babkas, thrown together before she had to race out the door. Most people would've skipped the bake entirely. Jen didn't. And that night, she came back to the thread to tell us what happened:

"I had to come back tonight to share that I brought my aunt who is in the hospital a big slice of babka and it made her so happy. She loved it! Thanks for the recipe

@Henry Hunter

Ten likes.

@Colleen Vergara

: "that's beautiful!"

That's what this community is for. Not the perfect loaf. Not the clean braid. The fact that someone with her whole day on fire still made babka, and then used that babka to bring comfort to someone she loves in a hospital bed. If you want to know what Babka Saturday was about this week, start there.

The Week Before Saturday

The 999 comments in that working thread didn't happen by accident. Henry spent the entire week building toward it.

Monday and Tuesday, he dropped the enriched dough intro: "Most of the bread we bake around here is lean..." That single post pulled 73 comments and 18 likes as bakers started realizing this week would be different. Wednesday, the Bread Debate Poll landed: Chocolate vs. Cinnamon vs. Savory. Fifty-seven votes. Seventy-nine comments. Sixteen likes. The community argued, chose sides, and got hungry.

@Cheryl Odden

opened a separate Babka Flavors thread the same day, and that one ran to 50 comments on its own as bakers started dreaming up what they'd actually make. Counter Culture with Dave and Henry went live Wednesday too.

Thursday, Henry posted "Your refrigerator is not a waiting room" to set up the cold retard strategy, which earned 37 comments and 32 likes. A new quiz dropped alongside it, and

@Buddy Tatum

came in with a perfect score of 2,575. Friday was when the thread volume went vertical: "It's Friday. You know what that means" (63 comments), the Friday Night Secret (63 comments, 17 likes), Holiday Babka Tip! pinned at the top (81 comments, 24 likes), Mini Babka's post (23 comments, 20 likes).

@N P

went to the store with zero flour on Friday and was mixing dough by Friday night. By the time Saturday's working thread opened, the community had already been marinating in babka for five days.

That's what 999 comments looks like when you build toward it intentionally. Henry didn't just start a thread on Saturday morning. He engineered a week of momentum, and 68 bakers showed up ready to bake because of it.

The Day

The morning came in fast.

@Candi Brown-McGriff

set the tone early: "Chin up, Apron on, Head in the game!!" The working thread lit up with check-ins before most people had finished their coffee. Henry had already made one babka by the time the group was mixing their first dough. Then he made a second and turned them into mini babkas for the track and field team. Then he had to make a third. "I have to make another babka today. My third!" He was using Cairo syrup for the glaze. That's the energy we were working with.

Some bakers had been at it since the night before.

@Donna Angelo

started after morning tea, working from an overnight dough.

@Susie Kendall

had her dough in the fridge at 10pm Friday.

@Angela Sides-McKay

had her dough in the proofing box the night before Saturday even arrived. Angela had Stevie Nicks blasting in the kitchen while she baked, and her daughter wandered in, saw the babka, and assumed it was breakfast. Angela told her it would be dinner dessert instead. That's a babka situation.

@Robert Caldas

hit his first wall before breakfast was over. His scale was set to the wrong units. He had to start over. But he stayed in the thread, did the coil folds, fixed the dough, and Henry signed off: "Much better!" Robert put it in the fridge overnight and came back later to reflect: "A lot to be said for realtime face to face interaction...made me feel more connected to this group." That's a baker figuring something out, not just about dough.

By midday the process photos were everywhere.

@Leigh Skowronski

had already dropped six step-by-step shots of her chocolate sourdough, milled from 100% freshly milled soft white wheat, and they earned the most likes of any photos in the thread.

@Donna Angelo

's blueberry cinnamon sourdough babka was proofing and she admitted it "looked a mess."

@Laine Hegness

called her shot: "the blueberry juice is going to color the bread and make the swirls incredible!" The community leaned in. Angela was running two completely different sourdough babkas at the same time, apple cinnamon on one end, lemon curd and freeze-dried strawberries on the other.

@Colleen Vergara

had her Oreo cookies and cream babka in its second rise with marshmallow frosting waiting on the counter.

@Linda Glantz

was braiding between work meetings. Her cream filling leaked, and she laughed about it.

@Patt Stanaway

walked in with not one babka but two. The first: Italian cheeses and prosciutto with a basil butter syrup. The second: lemon curd and blueberries. She admitted one was "falling in" when she put it in the pan. She baked it anyway, and both posted for 12 likes on her photos. That's the spirit: when the dough misbehaves, you don't stop. You put it in the pan and see what happens.

The teaching moments peaked in the afternoon.

@Sandy Chong

hit wet, hard-to-braid dough and Henry was right there: "When you encounter wet dough...do some additional coil folds, that'll give you some strength you might not otherwise have." He posted a 27-second braiding video for

@Mary Nunaley

@Tracy Havlik

stepped in for

@JoAnn Amato

when the braided log got too long for one pan: "When the braided strand is so long, gently push the log together to make it shorter. That's where the multi-directional filling layers come from." JoAnn split it into two pans. It worked.

Tracy had another tip that stuck. She posted it plainly: "Always, always, always mix cinnamon into a paste. Dry cinnamon and sugar is never a good idea." That's a member teaching members. Not Henry. Not a pinned post. Tracy, in the thread, passing along something she'd learned. That's what a 999-comment thread looks like from the inside.

@Susie Kendall

reported a 192 degree internal temp on her chocolate babka and asked if that was right. Henry confirmed: yes, that's exactly the number. Susie had been uncertain all day. She'd mixed her dough the night before, kept it in the fridge, and spent Saturday watching it. When she finally posted "Oh my! I think I did it!" the thread responded. Knowing the right temperature to pull your babka is one of those small things that changes how you bake forever. Susie now knows it from experience.

Then

@Judy Lyle

posted her photos, and everything stopped. Two babkas. Sun-dried tomato pesto and Asiago. Cream cheese, strawberry, loquat, and cinnamon. Henry's response: "These are absolutely fabulous Judie. Going on the poster." Ten likes. That's the

@Judy Lyle

move: don't pick a lane, bake both lanes simultaneously.

@Cheryl Odden

posted her cardamom bun babka and it pulled 14 likes in the thread, the highest-liked comment photo of the day. That wasn't a surprise from Cheryl. She's the one who opened the Babka Flavors thread earlier in the week that seeded the whole creative explosion. Fifty comments of flavor ideas before Saturday even arrived. She showed up and delivered exactly the kind of bake that thread promised.

By evening the thread was still alive.

@Deborah Karaban

was still proofing, deep into the night. The bake wasn't over just because the sun went down. Jen's hospital story had landed.

@Ehsan Omara

posted his savory sourdough with wholemeal flour.

@Nick Nebelsky

's coffee and cocoa loaf was done.

@Jill Hart

"s muffin tin babkas had already started a whole conversation about portion size and individual servings. Henry signed off: "I'm going to bed at a decent hour tonight."

@Sandy Chong, the Heartbeat of This Community

Sandy Chong deserves her own section, and here's why: she replied to virtually everyone. Not short replies. Real ones. When she hit wet dough and wasn't sure her babka would rise, she joked she "sat on the dough."

@Linda Glantz

replied with laughing emojis. Sandy came back with: "Who needs baby lotion. Just sit on a stick of butter." When she told

@Judy Lyle

"Sweetheart, you made me cry as it was not perfect. At least, it rose and not a flop,"

@Candi Brown-McGriff

fired back: "yesssss girl!!!! The Stiff Starter Squad are making GREAT BREAD!!!!"

@David Bachman

told her: "You just keep at it with these challenging bakes."

Sandy earned 1,992 points this week. She's first on the 7-day leaderboard by a wide margin. But the points are just the number behind what she actually does, which is keep everyone in the thread feeling like they belong there. A 999-comment working thread needs more than one good teacher. It needs someone who makes every reply feel like a conversation worth having. That's Sandy.

The Creative Explosion

Four paths were offered: Holiday Chocolate yeasted, Chocolate Sourdough, Roasted Garlic and Gruyere, and the base yeasted dough for a custom build. Sixty-eight bakers walked through those four doors and came out with something different every time.

@Henry Hunter

went cinnamon, orange zest, white chocolate chips, and toasted walnut, finished with Cairo syrup.

@Colleen Vergara

stacked Oreo cookies and cream with marshmallow frosting on top.

@Angela Sides-McKay

ran apple cinnamon and lemon curd with freeze-dried strawberries simultaneously.

@Judy Lyle

did savory and sweet in the same bake session.

@Jill Hart

put the dough in a muffin tin and invented individual portions by accident.

@Nick Nebelsky

went coffee and cocoa.

@Linda Glantz

pulled the Garlic and Gruyere path.

@Ehsan Omara

went savory sourdough with wholemeal.

@Leigh Skowronski

went all the way: chocolate sourdough, 100% freshly milled.

@Donna Angelo

turned blueberry cinnamon sourdough into something the whole community was watching in real time.

@Jen Dolan

grabbed the Nutella jar and made it work under pressure.

@Patt Stanaway

brought prosciutto and Italian cheeses into one and lemon curd and blueberries into another.

@Cheryl Odden

went cardamom bun babka and earned the most-liked photo in the thread. Michele showed up with a ChatGPT-inspired spinach artichoke babka.

@Travis Crawford

floated a Dubai chocolate pistachio-kunafa suggestion into the thread. That's the room we were in.

The Threads

The working thread was 999 comments. But the community was active in every direction around it.

Henry answered a member question publicly in the Coffee and Cocoa Babka Q&A (28 comments). A live session ran during the bake itself: Come into the LIVE pulled 39 comments from bakers who joined while their dough was proofing.

@Rhonda Talamo

posted her own Saturday bake thread with 8 comments. "Truly amazing to look at all the pictures," she wrote, and she was right. And then, when the baking was done, Henry posted "This was so much fun today," which collected 19 comments and 30 likes as the community started to come down from a full day of babka. That post is its own kind of data: when people are genuinely spent from something good, they tell you.

Member Spotlights

@Jen Dolan

. She didn't have a smooth Saturday. She had an aunt in the ER, a son without cleats, and barely enough time to get dough mixed. She made Nutella mini babkas anyway, and that night she brought a slice to a hospital room and it mattered to someone. That's not a baking story. That's what happens when you build a habit around something that connects people. Jen, you showed up when it was hard, and you used what you made to take care of someone you love. That's the whole point.

@Judy Lyle

. Two babkas. Two entirely different profiles. Sun-dried tomato pesto with Asiago and cream cheese with strawberry, loquat, and cinnamon. Henry put her on the poster. She earned it by deciding that one creative choice wasn't enough and making both without hesitation. That's a baker who has stopped asking permission from herself.

@Leigh Skowronski

. Six process photos. Chocolate sourdough milled from 100% freshly milled soft white wheat. The most-liked photos in the thread. She didn't just bake, she documented the work at every stage. That matters because other bakers learn from watching someone move through the process with that kind of intention. Leigh, your photos taught people who were still measuring flour.

@Angela Sides-McKay

. Two sourdough babkas, two completely different flavor profiles, one Saturday. Apple cinnamon and lemon curd with freeze-dried strawberries. Running parallel bakes is not a beginner move. She made it look like a natural thing to do. It's not. That's someone who has put in the work and trusts herself now.

@Colleen Vergara

. Oreo cookies and cream babka with marshmallow frosting. She committed fully to the creative path and then finished it with frosting on top. Second place on the 7-day leaderboard at 1,357 points. Active in replies all day. She shows up, she engages, and she does it with her own flavor every time.

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