Gooey Caramel Monkey Bread
Total Time
2 hours 25 minutes
Prep Time
2 hours
Cook Time
25 mins
Rating
4.8 out of 5 stars
(17)
Ingredients
10 servings
- For the Dough:
- 1 cup lukewarm water
- 1 packet instant yeast (about 2 teaspoons)
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1/4 cup honey or sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 3/4 cup butter (melted)
- 4 1/2 cups flour (more for dusting)
- For the Caramel Sauce:
- 1/2 cup butter (I prefer salted)
- 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
- a hit of sea salt if you like that kinda thing
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Preparation
Step 1
Make the Dough: Mix all the dough ingredients together in a mixing bowl, adding flour last. The mixture will be sticky. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a damp towel. Set aside in a warm-ish place to rise for 2 hours. Once it has risen, transfer to the fridge to chill so it’s easier to handle.
Step 2
Roll the Dough: When the dough has chilled, roll out half of it on a floured surface to a medium thickness. Cut it into bite-sized pieces or roll into balls. Wrap the other half of the dough in plastic wrap and store in the freezer for next time.
Step 3
Make the Sauce: Melt the butter, heavy cream, and brown sugar in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly, and heat for exactly five minutes. Remove from heat.
Step 4
Assemble: In a bundt® pan or pie pan, layer: 1/4 cup caramel sauce, dough, 1/4 cup caramel sauce, dough, 1/4 cup caramel sauce. Reserve the remaining sauce.
Step 5
Bake: Bake for 25-30 minutes at 350 degrees or until the top pieces are browning a little bit. Invert onto a serving plate and top with extra sauce if you want (um, yes, I DO WANT). Enjoy!
Step 6
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Chef's notes
Ideal schedule for warm, gooey, made-from-scratch monkey bread in the morning
8pm – mix up the dough
10pm – pop dough in fridge
8am – make sauce and bake!
This batch makes twice the amount of dough you need, so I’d suggest that the remaining dough can be used for round two of monkey bread, or cinnamon rolls, or a tea ring… you name it! The dough doesn’t do great in the fridge for long periods of time (it gets a fermented taste to it), so I’d suggest freezing it. And then you will want to bring the chilled dough back to room temperature before baking. I usually just let it sit on the counter while I make the sauce and that seems to work fine.
The sauce will firm up as it cools. To use the last of your sauce on the baked bread, just gently heat it in the saucepan again and it should loosen back up.
It does not work to make the sauce ahead and save it. When I did this, the sauce on the monkey bread turned into more of a hard caramel. So make your caramel sauce fresh if you want it to be nice and gooey.
This recipe works best if your eggs are at room temperature (if they are too cold, it can affect the rise time for the dough). I usually just stick them in a bowl of warm water to warm them up and then crack them into the dough bowl.
