The Slapdash Cook

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I have terrible luck with yeast-rasied breads. During my first few tries, back in college, this had to do with not noticing that I was using a 1/3-cup measuring cup as if it were a 1/2-cup measure. I also tend to not get very active yeast, probably a result of not using it much. And then there’s all the kneading, which J. likes but I find terminally boring and hard on the joints.

A few weeks ago, a friend mentioned that she had made no-knead bread. Then, more recently, the LA Times did a story on monkey bread. I absolutely adored the stuff as a kid. Despite the fact that sugary, buttery bread is nobody’s idea of a healthy food, I couldn’t resist the chance to try it for myself. However, I thought I’d try it as a no-knead bread. It worked! Although it wasn’t quite no-knead. More on that in the recipe.

I made several changes to this recipe, though not as many as I might have tried to get away with if it were a quick bread. I’m nervous about messing with liquid ratios when yeast is involved. I substituted whole wheat flour for half the flour, which worked so well that I suspect I could try whole wheat for the whole amount. I used a smaller cake pan than they called for, which meant we had excess dough. We put the excess in some ramekins and baked them separately for less time. And most importantly, I used a quarter of the butter-sugar mixture called for, I think without any real ill effect. In fact, J. made extra butter-sugar mixture to put in the ramekins (which was truer to the original recipe) and I found the result too sweet. So don’t be afraid to cut back. If I made this again, I’d also add cinnamon to that mixture and up the cinnamon in the bread. Unless I do the savory version linked from the LA Times page above.

Cinnamon Walnut Monkey Bread, slightly slimmed down
(From the Oct. 21 LA Times, adapted from “The Best From Helen Corbitt’s Kitchens.”)

1 package (1/4 oz) active dry yeast
1 cup lukewarm milk, no hotter than 125 degrees. This took 1:15-1:30 in our microwave. I used skim milk.
Scant 3 1/3 cups (14 ounces) flour. If you can, I highly recommend doing this by weight. Baking by weight is one thing the Europeans do better than us.
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) softened butter. I would certainly have tried to use less if I hadn’t been concerned about ruining the recipe by messing with the liquid ratios.
1/4 cup (half a stick) to 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
Three tablespoons to 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup toasted walnuts, coarsely chopped, or other nuts, or raisins or what have you
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon, more if you want cinnamon in the topping or like a stronger cinnamon flavor
1/4 cup sugar

1. In a big bowl, stir together the proper-temperature milk with the yeast.

2. Let that sit a while while you measure or weigh the flour into another bowl, along with the salt and sugar. The recipe called for sifting, but I got lazy.

3. Now you have to beat the softened butter into the yeast mixture, using a hand mixer or stand mixer. I am not cool enough to own a stand mixer, so I put the bowl-scraper attachment on my hand mixer and went at it. If you have a choice, I strongly recommend the stand mixer instead because of how the hand mixer got food everywhere throughout this process. I am still finding bits of dough underneath things.

4. Once the butter is beaten in, start adding the flour in batches. The scraper attachment did nothing for me, so I stopped occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber scraper. At the end, you may have to mix by hand.

5. As I added more flour, the beaters started doing this neat dough funnel thing. Once all the flour is in, the original recipe calls for you to continue beating until the dough looks sticky but feels smooth when rolled into a ball (about two minutes, according to them). I didn’t do this because I thought the hand mixer wasn’t going to work, plus I was going to substitute time for kneading by letting it sit overnight. However, it must have gotten at least some kneading, because it rose faster than I thought. Though slower than the original recipe says to expect (one hour). Here’s how it looked right after I finished the mixing/beating:

An hour later:

Four and a half hours later:

I could probably have stopped the rise at the four-hour mark, but I was doing other things.

6. At some point during or after the rising, it’s time to make the butter-sugar mixture that probably formed the basis of my childhood love of this bread. The original recipe calls for two sticks of butter and 3/4 cup brown sugar. I have a problem with using that much butter, so I cut it down to half a stick and 3 tb brown sugar. YMMV. This is also where I think it would be nice to add some cinnamon.

If you do it my way, put the whole amount in the bottom of a 10″ cake pan or similar; if you do it their way, you should only put a third of the butter-sugar mixture in the bottom. Then sprinkle in some amount (up to 1/2 cup) of chopped nuts, raisins or something else you think would taste nice in this. Cubed apple pieces could be good.

7. Once the dough is risen enough, punch it down. J. enjoys this part very much. I also got him to help me with the next bit, which is to separate the dough into four equal pieces, roll each of those pieces into a 12″ log and cut the 12″ log into 10 pieces. So you should have 40 pieces of roughly even size. After you do that, mix 1/4 cup sugar with 3/4 tsp cinnamon. Again, I’d use more cinnamon if I made this again. Roll the dough bits in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and place them in the bottom of your cake pan, on top of the walnuts and butter-sugar mixture. They should cover the bottom of the pan and be touching but not tightly packed. J. discouraged stacking, which was probably wise. Sprinkle the rest of the nuts/fruit, if any, on top of the dough.

8. At this point, the original recipe calls for another rise, until the dough has more than doubled (they estimate an hour). We didn’t do that because we wanted it for breakfast, so into the fridge it went to slow the rise! But because the cake pan we used was only 8″, we had extra dough, which we did bake after another rise. Those are almonds on top because we ran out of walnuts.

You can see the result of the little ramekin mini-breads at the top of this post. I think we cooked them for 20-30 minutes rather than 35-45. As I said, they were good, but a bit too sweet for my taste.

9. The fridge bread stayed there for about 12 hours. It did rise a bit, but not in an aggressive, spilling-over-the-sides kinda way. Here it is the next morning:

I let it sit, covered, on the counter for about 45 minutes to warm up, while the oven preheated to 350 and I went back to bed with a book.

10. If you are using more butter-sugar mixture, pour it over the bread right before baking. Then slide it into a 350-degree oven and bake for 35-45 minutes. I found I only needed 35.

11. You’re supposed to let it sit for 15 minutes afterward. Not surprisingly, we were tempted to cut that down to 10, which we did to no ill effect. Serve with coffee, tea or milk and lots of lower-calorie food items.