Sourdough Monkey Bread - Discard Option
Sourdough monkey bread is a sweet and tangy cinnamon pull-apart bread that is made with balls of sourdough tossed in a cinnamon sugar coating and then baked in a gooey caramel sauce. It is so fun and easy to make, similar to sourdough cinnamon rolls, but with less fuss, this cinnamon pull-apart bread made with a sweet dough is a go-to recipe for our family for breakfast or even dessert all throughout the year.
Ingredients
- ½ cup warm milk
- ½ cup sourdough starter active or discard
- ½ cup melted butter or tallow
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder, optional use if baking right away or using sourdough discard
- 1 teaspoon baking soda, optional use if baking right away or using sourdough discard
Additional Ingredients
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tablespoon cinnamon
- ½ cup melted butter
Instructions
- In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, combine all the monkey bread ingredients.
- If using a mixer, start mixing on medium-low speed and slowly add the flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
- If you’re not using a mixer, add the flour to the other ingredients in the bowl and knead until the dough comes together into a nice ball. Stretch and fold or knead the dough every 15-30 minutes for a couple hours. This will develop the gluten similar to how the mixer develops it by mixing.
- Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
- Grease the bottom of the pan with butter or tallow.
- Pinch off golf ball sized dough pieces and roll them in your hands until they are smooth. Roll them in the cinnamon sugar mixture and place in the greased bundt pan.
- Add melted butter to the cinnamon sugar mixture, and pour this butter mixture over the top of the monkey bread dough.
- If using active starter, cover with plastic wrap or beeswax wrap and let the dough rise on the counter 6-8 hours or overnight for bulk fermentation. If you need to wait longer than overnight to bake them, place them in the refrigerator, and pull them out to finish raising a couple of hours before baking.
- You can also freeze the monkey bread at this point, and take it out of the freezer to raise and bake later on.
- When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
- Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and immediately flip upside down onto a platter or large plate.
- Mix up optional glaze if desired and drizzle over the top of the monkey bread.
- Savor every bite! Store any leftovers in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to one week, although I know they’ll never last that long.
Notes
- If your sourdough starter is really thin, you may need to add a little more flour to this recipe. I always mix them until they dough pulls away from the sides of my mixer bowl, or until it’s not super sticky if mixing up by hand.
- You can mix these in a mixer (my favorite is a Bosch), or just mix up the dough and do a series of kneading or stretch and folds every few minutes for about an hour to develop the gluten in the dough.
- It is perfectly safe to add the eggs to this dough and still allow the dough to bulk ferment at room temperature overnight because the good active bacteria in the sourdough starter will prevent any bad bacteria from forming in the eggs.
- If you don't have a bundt pan, you can also bake this in a 9" x 13" pan too.
