![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1ef068179e60cc4207484c2a8ed98f2971-0126-Food-Babka.rsquare.w700.jpg\")
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\n Dark-chocolate babka from Michaeli Bakery.
\n Illustration: The Ellaphant in the Room\n <\/p>\n
When Adir Michaeli opened his first Michaeli Bakery<\/a> in 2019, he did so with a bold claim: It was he who first developed the recipe for the Nutella-laced, syrup-brushed babka that several years earlier had catapulted Breads Bakery<\/a> to international fame. Michaeli did work at Breads, under baker Uri Scheft, but this origin story has never sat well with that bakery\u2019s owner, Gadi Peleg. \u201cHe was hardly involved,\u201d Peleg insists. \u201cHe was a small part of a big team \u2014 saying that he invented the babka in some way is like some engineer at Apple saying that they invented the iPhone or a cook at a Shake Shack saying they invented that burger. It\u2019s absolutely false.\u201d<\/p>\n Scheft \u2014 who has since co-founded the Bakey<\/a> chain in Boston \u2014 has in the past claimed ownership over the recipe, too: Michaeli worked for him in Israel at Lehamim<\/a> (the name translates to \u201cbreads\u201d) to perfect that babka, where the sweet, swirled breads are as common as chocolate-chip cookies in the U.S. The two eventually came to New York to work on the opening team at Breads. It was only in this city that someone had the idea to add Nutella to the recipe, an ingredient that changed this country\u2019s babka landscape for good. (New York Magazine called the Breads babka the best in the city in 2013, soon after that bakery opened.) Now, it is Michaeli who hopes to move the needle once again with an entirely new recipe that he\u2019s unveiled at his bakeries.<\/p>\n Unlike Michaeli\u2019s other babkas \u2014 he offers a number of flavors, including a familiar Nutella variant \u2014 his recipe for his dark-chocolate babka employs a more complicated lamination technique to create a lighter crumb, improve shelf life, and more evenly distribute the filling throughout the loaf. \u201cA lot more layers, but not too many layers,\u201d he says. \u201cI really wanted people to feel something delicate when they cut into it \u2014 especially, let\u2019s say, on day two.\u201d (A taste test confirms these claims: It\u2019s good babka.)<\/p>\n