You learn all the time no matter how old you get. I did not know that there was a Jewish cake of this type and that it is called the exact same as in Polish - the nickname for grandma.

I sympathize with the author's plight. My father, now gone nearly 15 years, loved babka - nothing fancy, just a plain risen yeast cake. The author's frustration at not finding a baker of same in her area is a variant of the theme of my searches 25+ years ago. In Chicago, there is no shortage of Polish bakeries. The shortage of bakers who can make one that doesn't have the texture of a dry cleaning sponge and lacks flavor has always been the problem. You can't tell by the look of it. You have to pay and then find you can barely tear it up for the sparrows since they have too good of tase also to want to consume it.

My interim solution to get him something decent stop at Italian delis and pick up mass-produced pannetone. Although it is not the exact same cake in construction, the flavor is the same and the texture beats badly baked babka by a mile.

The punchline, of course, is that by the time I had gone through almost 20 bakeries on both sides of the city and finally found one that knew how to bake one, my Dad was gone.