I ended up using an even simpler recipe found on the web. It is excellent! 5 simple ingredients; throw them all together; let rise an hour; bake 45 minutes. Easy Peasy and great comfort food with butter and honey. (I cut this recipe in 1/2 from the original recipe, so you can easily double it for four loaves). 5 1/2 cups all purpose flour 1 1/2 pkgs. quick rising yeast 1 T. salt 1 1/2 T sugar 2 3/4 cups warm water Mix just to moisten. Spoon into two loaf pans. Let rise until double (about 1 hour). Bake 350 for 45 minutes; brush tops with melted butter the last 10 minutes of baking. Let cool completely. Makes fabulous toast.

Years ago I went with a small group on a garden tour several states away. One of the ladies brought bran muffins for us all to eat on the way, I guess because we'd be sitting in the car for most of two days. They were fantastically good, and I was never a bran muffin fan. She knew we'd want the recipe – she was ready with a printed copy for each of us! It is a very basic bran muffin recipe, originally with walnuts and raisins. She replaced those with black walnuts and chopped dried apricots. Wow. It was a great combination.

This is an interesting recipe. I get why she chose ”babka” as a word—the finished appearance—but it's not that. You can mess around with the flavor ingredients all you want. There is a clarity that the designated ingredients have which you'll lose with ”Italian seasoning”. That makes me think you don't have dried oregano except in the blend. If I'm wrong, just substitute dry for fresh. Cayenne powder is a decent substitute for red pepper flake, though will be a different eating experience. For many things, pistachios are an okay sub for pinenuts, but I think they might be lost in this, and they have a different texture, but pinenuts don't have a lot of flavor, so if you don't mind ”wasting” the pistachios, it could work. My own suggestion, since you'd be making several substitutions, is to build your own flavor profile around the gruyere, garlic and Italian herb seasoning. Those go together fine. Add a textural component and a heat component, or not, as they please you. Heat a teeny taste of all your bits together and decide if you like them Pay attention to the proportions and adjust quantities to fit what you have, rather than what the recipe gives for the original ingredients. Do you have any hazelnuts? They might go well? Just think through what will go best with your herbs. It's probably too late for today's endeavor, but pinenuts don't have to be exhobitant. They're currently a few dollars more than pistachios, for half a pound, if you shop around, but they're not always outrageous. Have fun and good luck. I'm sure they'll be fine. And I'm saving the recipe. :)

I am not a big fan of muffins — with a few exceptions; good bran and also good home made blueberry muffins. A million years ago I got to eat free breakfasts at a suburban cafeteria — delicious bacon or sausage, eggs, or pancakes and so on. This cafeteria had the most wonderful bran muffins. I spent years thereafter looking for a recipe that would give a similar muffin — exquisitely branny, nutty and hearty, but not new age granola-head grainy and hard. One day I found it! In the same Boston Globe chat column. I tried it. THE ONE!!! I photocopied the BeCheeses out of it. I re-typed it. I saved it. I gave it to anyone I thought was not a silly bakery fluff muffin dope. Then, between an injury and chaos, I misplaced or lost it* Dammit! It was a heartier, more genuine bran muffin than the one I included here. I hope I come across it again. * I seem to have an unfortunate habit of putting a treasured thing in a ”Safe place” never to be seen again. (I could write a list — very pathetic.)