Baba is the yeast pastry that became familiar in Lorraine in the early nineteenth century and is eaten, as described above, by the Jews of Alsace for Purim breakfast; it was sometimes confused with Kugelhopf. The French gilded the lily, dousing the dry baba with rum—a novelty from America. Today babas are baked and served two ways, in either a large or a tiny bulbous mold. I adore baba soaked in rum and order it whenever I can. After tasting an especially light baba in a tiny sixteen-seat restaurant called Les Arômes in Aubagne, I asked the chef, Yanick Besset, if he would give me his recipe, and here it is. As you can see, a good baba dough itself contains very little sugar, the sweetness coming from the sugar-rum bath spooned on after baking.
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