When baking becomes a passion you start to come across recipes of baked goods that are different and exciting. Some of the recipes would have terrified me a few years ago but over the years my baking confidence has increased and I am willing to try to bake anything however unusual. In this recipe I will show you how to make monkey bread from scratch.

I do not remember how I came across monkey bread but I got excited by the idea. Wikipedia defines monkey bread as
“Monkey bread, also called monkey puzzle bread, sticky bread, African coffee cake, golden crown, pinch-me cake, pluck-it cake, bubbleloaf and monkey brains is a sweet, sticky, gooey pastry served in the United States for breakfast. It consists of pieces of soft bread with cinnamon sprinkled on it.”

It is a lot of fun to make and if you have kids they will enjoy helping and getting their hands messy.

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups plain flour
• 2 cups spelt flour
• 1 packet active dry yeast (7g)
• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 and 1/2 cups warm milk

Coating

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 and 1/4 cups caster sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

Method

• In a large mixing bowl add the milk, melted butter, eggs, sugar, yeast and salt and stir until sugar and yeast dissolve
• Add flour to form a dough and mix with a wooden spoon and then knead with your hands.
• Turn the dough onto a floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 5-10 minutes.
• Form dough into a smooth ball and place into a large greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. I greased the bowl with vegetable oil. Cover with clingfilm and let it rise until doubled in size, about 1-2 hours.
• Generously butter and flour a 10-12 cup bundt pan. Set aside.
• Prepare the coating by melting the butter in one bowl and then in a separate bowl mix the caster sugar with the ground cinnamon.
• Punch the risen dough down very gently. Weigh the dough ball and divide the weight by 40-45 so as to know how much each ball is to weigh. You will need 40-45 balls. I weigh every ball to get them the right size. Dip each ball, one by one in the melted butter and then generously roll in the cinnamon-sugar mixture to coat them. You may need more cinnamon-sugar depending how heavy you coat each ball. Arrange them in the bundt pan as you go.
• Cover the bundt pan and allow the dough balls to rise again for about an hour in a warm place.
• Preheat the oven to 175C/350F
• Bake for 35-37 minutes or until golden brown on top.  Using a spatula loosen the bread around the edges to make it easier to get the bread out of the bundt pan.
• Cool the bread in the bundt pan for 5 minutes then carefully turn it out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
• Enjoy!

Tip: If you only have plain flour just use all plain flour for this monkey bread recipe.  You can also substitute the spelt flour for equal amount bread flour.  You can also use just bread flour for the recipe.

I hope you had a lot of fun with this recipe on how to make monkey bread from scratch.

If you like making bread you can also try this basic bloomer loaf recipe