Monkey Bread

Ingredients

Dough

• 500g (4 1/6 cups) bread flour
• 240g (1 cup) whole milk, warm (about 90F / 32C)
• 100g (2 eggs) large eggs
• 50g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
• 60g (4 Tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
• 7g (2 1/4 tsp (1 packet)) instant yeast
• 9g (1 1/2 tsp) fine salt

Butter Bath

• 170g (12 Tbsp) unsalted butter, melted

Cinnamon Sugar Coating

• 150g (3/4 cup) light brown sugar, packed
• 100g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
• 8g (1 Tbsp) ground cinnamon
• 1g (1/4 tsp) fine salt

Brown Sugar Caramel

• 85g (6 Tbsp) unsalted butter
• 110g (1/2 cup) light brown sugar, packed
• 30g (2 Tbsp) heavy cream
• 5g (1 tsp) vanilla extract
• 1g (1/4 tsp) fine salt

Equipment

• 10 to 12 cup bundt pan
• Stand mixer with dough hook (or your hands)
• Digital kitchen scale
• Dough whisk
• Bench scraper
• Two medium mixing bowls
• Small saucepan
• Instant-read thermometer
• Rimmed sheet pan

Method

Mix the Dough

1. Combine and mix. In the mixer bowl, whisk together 500g bread flour, 50g granulated sugar, 7g instant yeast, and 9g fine salt. Add 240g warm whole milk and 100g eggs. Mix on low with the dough hook until there's no dry flour left, about 2 minutes, then raise to medium-low and work it for 5 minutes. This is an enriched dough, so it starts out shaggy and slack. Give it time.
2. Add the butter. With the mixer running on medium-low, add 60g softened butter a tablespoon at a time, waiting until each piece disappears before adding the next. The dough will look broken and greasy for a minute. Keep going. It pulls back together and turns smooth and glossy, about 6 to 8 more minutes. Stop when the dough clears the sides of the bowl and passes the windowpane test.
3. Mixing by hand. No mixer, no problem. Mix everything but the butter with a dough whisk until shaggy, rest it 20 minutes, then knead on the counter for 8 minutes. Flatten the dough, smear the softened butter across it, fold it over, and keep kneading. It gets messy before it gets smooth. Use a bench scraper to gather it back together and give it 10 to 12 minutes total.

First Rise

1. Rise until nearly doubled. Round the dough into a ball, drop it into a lightly buttered bowl, and cover it. Let it go 60 to 90 minutes at room temperature until it's nearly doubled and feels puffy and alive under your palm. In a cold kitchen this takes longer. Watch the dough, not the clock. This is bulk fermentation, where the flavor gets built.

Butter, Cinnamon Sugar, and Caramel

1. Melt the butter bath. Melt 170g butter and pour it into a wide shallow bowl. Let it cool to just warm so it clings to the dough instead of running off.
2. Mix the cinnamon sugar. In a second wide bowl, rub 150g light brown sugar, 100g granulated sugar, 8g ground cinnamon, and 1g fine salt together with your fingers until the brown sugar has no lumps. Two separate bowls, side by side. Butter first, sugar second. That assembly line is what keeps this fast.
3. Cook the caramel. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 85g butter with 110g brown sugar, stirring until it's smooth and just bubbling, about 2 minutes. Pull it off the heat and stir in 30g heavy cream, 5g vanilla, and 1g salt. It thickens as it cools. Set it aside.
4. Prep the pan. Butter your bundt pan heavily, getting into every groove and up the center tube. Then dust it with granulated sugar and tap out the excess. The sugar layer is cheap insurance against a stuck loaf.

Portion and Roll

1. Divide the dough. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured counter and press it into a rough rectangle about an inch thick. With a bench scraper, cut it into strips, then cut across to make roughly 55 pieces, about 17g each. Walnut sized. Don't measure every one. Uneven pieces are the whole point of this bread, and they give you the craggy layers you're after.
2. Roll them through. Working a handful at a time, drop the pieces into the melted butter, roll them around, lift them out and let the excess drip off, then tumble them in the cinnamon sugar until coated. Move them to a sheet pan as you go. Your hands are going to get sticky. That's the job.

Stack the Pan

1. Layer the pieces. Drop the coated pieces into the prepared bundt pan in loose layers. Don't press or pack them. Air gaps between the balls are what let the caramel run down through the loaf. Fill the pan no more than two thirds full so it has room to rise.

Second Rise

1. Let it puff. Cover the pan loosely and let it rise 45 to 60 minutes, until the dough has climbed to about three quarters up the pan and the pieces have swollen enough to just touch each other. Under-proofed monkey bread bakes up dense with a raw center. Give it the time.
2. Preheat. Thirty minutes before you bake, heat the oven to 350F (175C) with a rack in the center position.

Bake It Through

1. Pour the caramel. Only now, right before it goes in the oven, spoon the warm caramel over the proofed dough and let it settle down into the gaps. It will have stiffened up a little while the dough rose, so warm it back over low heat for a minute until it pours easily. Scrape any leftover cinnamon sugar over the top too.
2. Bake. Set the bundt pan on a rimmed sheet pan to catch any caramel that bubbles over. Bake at 350F (175C) for 32 to 38 minutes. If the top is browning hard before 25 minutes, tent it loosely with foil.
3. Check the center. Slide an instant-read thermometer down through the side of the loaf into the middle. You want 190 to 200F (88 to 93C). This is the one place monkey bread actually goes wrong. The outside looks perfect and the middle is still wet dough. Trust the thermometer over the color.

Flip It While It's Hot

1. Rest, then flip. Let the pan sit 8 to 10 minutes. Not longer. Run a thin knife around the outer edge and the center tube, set a serving plate over the pan, and flip the whole thing in one confident motion. Leave the pan sitting on top for a minute so the caramel drips down, then lift it away.
2. Serve warm. Scrape any caramel left in the pan and spoon it over the top. Pull it apart with your hands. No knife. That's the point.

Make It Savory

Monkey bread is a dough plus three layers. A fat, a coating, and a sauce. Swap any one of the three and you've got a new bread. The dough barely changes at all. Once you see it that way, you stop asking permission and start inventing.

1. Change one: drop the sugar. Cut the granulated sugar in the dough from 50g down to 15g. That's enough to feed fermentation and brown the crust, but not enough to taste sweet. You're not removing the sugar, you're demoting it. Everything else in the dough stays exactly as written.
2. Change two: the butter bath becomes the flavor. The cinnamon sugar and the brown sugar caramel are gone completely. This is still an enriched dough, so the butter matters as much as it did before, it's just carrying different flavor now. Skip both. That means your melted butter is doing all the work now. Garlic goes in there. Herbs go in there. Pepper, paprika, whatever you're building toward. Everything lives in that butter, so build it with intention and taste it before you roll anything through it.
3. Change three: raise the heat. Bake at 375F (190C) instead of 350F (175C). There's no sugar coating to burn, so you can push the temperature, and the higher heat gives you better crust on the exposed pieces. Figure 28 to 34 minutes. Same internal target, 190F (88C). Butter the pan but skip the sugar dusting, savory pans release fine without it.
4. Use a skillet if you have one. A 10-inch cast iron skillet beats the bundt for savory every time. Crispier edges, easier to serve, better on a dinner table next to a pot of soup. The bundt still works. The skillet is just better here.
5. Assemble and bake. Everything else runs the same as the sweet version. Cut into roughly 55 pieces, roll them through your savory butter, tumble them in cheese or seasoning, and stack them loosely in the pan. Tuck any cubed cheese or meat down into the gaps as you go rather than mixing it into the coating. Proof, bake, and check the center with a thermometer. Then the same 8 to 10 minute rest before you turn it out.

Tip: Cubes, not shredded. Shredded cheese melts away into the coating and disappears. Cubed cheese tucked between the dough balls melts into pockets, and those pockets are the whole effect you're after.

Baking

Oven: 175°C / 350°F. Internal temperature when done: 91°C / 195°F.

Bake time: 32 to 38 minutes

Storage

• Room temperature: Best the day it's baked, warm from the pan. Covered at room temperature it holds 2 days before the sugar coating starts going tacky.
• Refrigerated: Up to 4 days covered. The crumb firms up cold, so warm it before serving.
• Frozen: Freeze the baked loaf whole or in chunks up to 2 months, wrapped tight. You can also freeze the coated dough balls in the assembled pan before proofing, then thaw overnight in the fridge and proof at room temperature in the morning.
• Refresh: Warm the whole loaf at 300F (150C) for 10 to 12 minutes, or microwave individual pieces for 15 seconds.

Make-ahead option: assemble the pan the night before, cover, and refrigerate. Pull it out in the morning, let it come to room temperature and finish proofing for 90 minutes to 2 hours, then bake.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to use a bundt pan?

No. A bundt is traditional because the center tube helps the middle bake through, but a 9x5-inch loaf pan gives you a sliceable pull-apart, and a 10-inch cast iron skillet gives you crispier caramelized edges and photographs beautifully. With a loaf pan or skillet, add 5 to 8 minutes to the bake and check the internal temperature carefully since there's no center tube helping you out.

How do I make a savory version?

Three changes. Drop the dough sugar from 50g to 15g, skip the cinnamon sugar and caramel completely so the butter bath becomes your flavor carrier, and bake at 375F (190C) instead of 350F with the same 190F (88C) internal target. The full walkthrough, including garlic parmesan herb, cheddar jalapeño bacon, pizza pull-apart, and rosemary with olive oil and flaky salt, is in the Savory Version section at the bottom of this recipe.

My monkey bread was raw in the middle. What happened?

Almost always one of two things. Either it went in under-proofed, so the dough was dense and slow to heat through, or it came out on color instead of temperature. A bundt full of dough balls is a lot of mass. Give it the full final proof until the pieces just touch, and take it to 190 to 200F (88 to 93C) in the center. Don't guess.

Can I use store-bought biscuit dough like the old recipes do?

You can, and plenty of people grew up on that version. But canned biscuit dough is chemically leavened, so you get a dense, cakey pull-apart instead of a light, stretchy one. Real yeasted dough takes about 20 minutes of extra hands-on work and the difference is not close. Make it once from scratch and you'll see.

It stuck to the pan. How do I fix it?

Put the plate and inverted pan back in a warm oven for 3 or 4 minutes to soften the caramel, then try again. To avoid it next time, butter the pan heavily into every groove, dust it with granulated sugar, and flip within 8 to 10 minutes of pulling it from the oven. Once that caramel cools it behaves like glue.

Can I make this the night before?

Yes, and it's the best way to serve it for a holiday morning. Assemble the pan completely, cover it, and refrigerate overnight. In the morning let it sit at room temperature for 90 minutes to 2 hours until the pieces have puffed and just touch, then bake as written. You may need an extra 3 to 5 minutes since it starts out cold.

How many pieces should I cut the dough into?

About 55, roughly 17g each, walnut sized. Bigger pieces mean fewer surfaces for the coating to grab and a doughier bite. Smaller pieces mean more caramelized surface but they can dry out. Don't weigh every one. Uneven pieces bake into better texture and craggier layers.

Nutrition

Per serving (1 serving (about 1/12 of the loaf)): 500 calories, 66g carbohydrates, 7g protein, 23g fat, 2g fiber, 340mg sodium. Makes 12 servings.