Daimaru Kobe tests a one-day, five-bakery babka tasting event
Five Kobe-area bakeries line up their take on babka, an Eastern European sweet bread still rare on Japanese shelves, for one day on Daimaru Kobe's basement food floor.
Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Store Co., Ltd. (株式会社大丸松坂屋百貨店) said it will gather babka (バブカ) -- a twisted, filled sweet bread -- from five Kobe-area bakeries at a special venue in front of the east escalator on the basement level of Daimaru Kobe (大丸神戸店), for one day only on November 3, a national holiday, according to a November 2 announcement. The stall runs 10am to 6pm, or until stock sells out.
Babka, which the company describes as a sweet bread of Eastern European origin that spread to New York with immigrants, is still a minor category on Japanese bakery shelves, and each of the five shops is bringing a different take. La Pierre Blanche (ラ・ピエール・ブランシュ), run by chocolatier Tadashi Shiraiwa, is selling a brioche babka with almond cream, chocolate chips, hazelnuts and orange peel at ¥880; Concent Market (コンセントマーケット), a Nishinomiya bakery founded in 2010, is offering a kumquat-and-chestnut-chocolate version at ¥1,200 and a pecan-and-cacao-nib version at ¥1,000, made from a blended danish, campagne and baguette dough. Pan Lab Saku (ぱんらぼSaku) of Higashinada Ward, Kobe, is selling a hojicha, white chocolate and orange babka at ¥600; Side Field Bread, near JR Nada or Hanshin Iwaya stations, a pistachio chocolate version at ¥380; and Boulangerie Ono (ブーランジェリー・オノ) of Nada Ward two versions -- a bitter-cacao Cacao Passion at ¥540 and a Coffee Chocolat at ¥486.
It's a small event -- one day, five counters, no stated plan to extend it -- but it is a familiar move for a depachika: testing a still-unfamiliar product category against real footfall before deciding whether it earns a permanent counter. Pitting five bakeries' versions side by side also lets Daimaru read which interpretation of babka -- chocolate-heavy, fruit-forward or closer to a classic brioche -- actually sells, information a single vendor's trial run wouldn't give it.