Tuesday Dinners

Monkey Bread

Honestly no one knows why it’s called that.

⏲️ Prep Time
10 Minutes (+1 hour rest)

⏲️ Cook Time
20 Minutes

🍴 Makes
~32 Pieces

Ingredients

Dough

  • 3 1/2 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup sugar
  • 2 1/4 tsp (1 package) yeast
  • Pinch of salt
  • 1 cup milk
  • 4 tablespoon (1/2 stick) butter
  • 1 egg

Mixture

  • 8 tablespoon (1 stick) butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 tablespoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar

Directions

  1. Activate yeast with warm milk and quarter cup of sugar
  2. Mix in remaining dough ingredients and knead until structure is solid
  3. Melt stick of butter with sugar, cinnamon and brown sugar, mix until combined
  4. Either dividing the dough or just tearing off pieces dip in butter-sugar mixture and place tightly together in either a 9×13 pan, 2 8 inch cake rounds, a Bundt pan or some other oven safe dish
  5. Let rest (covered) for 45 minutes or until doubled in size
  6. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes

Step by Step Directions

Warm up your milk (usually a minute in the microwave works) and add your quarter cup of sugar and yeast. This recipe doesn’t require a full blooming of the yeast, so if you make sure it’s alive (it creates bubbles) that should be good enough.

Add in the rest of your dough ingredients. The butter doesn’t have to be melted but it should be softened so that it’s able to be worked into the dough.

This dough will be, for lack of a better term, more “buttery” than other doughs you might have worked with. After working it into a consistent dough you might feel that you need to add more flour. I can’t stop you from doing that, but you don’t need to, that’s exactly what we’re going for.

Do not cover and rest for any amount of time. We’re going to go right into the next phase.

Melt a stick of butter. You can either do this with your sugar and cinnamon already in the bowl or you ca add them later. Just make sure that everything is combined.

Now it’s time to create an assembly line. Get out whatever dishes you’re planning on baking in. I personally like cake pans because when you turn out the bread it’s a cheaper version of how fancy a Bundt pan looks. The cinnamon in the bottom probably doesn’t do anything but it makes me fancier than I am.

This recipe makes 32 “pieces” of monkey bread, if you count the picture below you’ll see that I missed that number rather dramatically. Just tear the pieces into a size you would like to eat and you’ll be fine.

Dip your pieces of dough into your sugar mixture and make sure it’s evenly coated. Then jam the pieces as close together as you can in your pan. If there’s gaps then make sure to press down on the dough until it’s evenly spread.

Spread any leftover sugar mixture over the top of the dough.

Cover your pan(s) and let rest for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until the dough has doubled. If you want to sprinkle some extra sugar or connamon over the top feel free.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Now comes the fun part, after letting cool for ~5 minutes put out a plate/tray/something flat and flip your pan over the top of it. Smack the back of the pan and it should come out fairly easily (we used lot of butter). Congratulations, you now have a brunch worthy centerpiece.

Enjoy.

Variations

  • Use buttermilk biscuit dough instead of making your own (remove all dough steps, just dip and bake)
  • Use different blends of spices. Almost anything you would add to a cinnamon roll you can add to monkey bread
  • Add a glaze/frosting for people to dip in or to put on top

Unsolicited Feedback

  • AK: If this is “monkey bread” why aren’t there any bananas? Don’t monkey’s love bananas?
  • HN: The pieces are small enough that I don’t feel bad about just having one. Or maybe two…
  • CH: Why does everything have to have cinnamon? There are other spices you know.