Monkey Bread

After two weeks of intense proposal writing and a seven hour editing session, with a bout of Valentine's Day bitchiness mixed in, I was one cranky old biddy. Sex or exercise probably would've improved my mood, but the first option was not in the cards (grrr) and I was feeling too self-indulgent for any exercise, and too lazy to stop off at the grocery store to get any interesting ingredients. I decided to bake monkey bread since I had all the ingredients. Back when I was a kid, it was called cinnamon pull-aparts, but now everyone seems to call it monkey bread, which is a much better name. In any case, you take small balls of dough (either biscuit or yeast), dip them in melted butter, roll them in a mix of sugar and cinnamon, and put them in a bundt pan. When it is done baking it is very similar to a sticky bun but it's less work and more amenable to adjusting the portion size.*
I used a simple yeast dough recipe for cinnamon bread. I don't feel like typing it out, but you can find a good one over at Smitten Kitchen, complete with pictures. Anyway, after the dough had risen once, I assembled the monkey bread. I didn't bother rolling the dough out, and just pulled off walnut size pieces instead and rolled them in the butter and sugar. I then let it rise for about an hour while I took a bath, and then put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, I let it warm up to room temperature and then baked it at 350F for about 40 minutes or so while I did yet another round of proposal proofreading. The whole house smelled really good. After it cooled for about 5 minutes, I turned over the pan onto a plate and the read came out cleanly. It is important not to wait to long, or it will stick to the pan. I then frosted it with a cream cheese glaze.
It was very tasty - a bit on the sweet side, but keep in mind I have the same issue with cinnamon rolls. Next time I'll skip the frosting and just eat it with cream cheese.
Anyway, it didn't entirely cure my bad mood, but it certainly helped.

* I always find cinnamon rolls too big or, if they're the right size, they're too dry. It's sort of like with pancakes - my eyes are always bigger than my stomach. Not everyone has this problem, however. I made monkey bread once when I was in high school. I set it on a rack to cool and went and did something else. When I came back, it was all gone My brother and his friend Steve had eaten the whole damned thing.

lazy biddy bread recipe

Unfortunately for my waistline, I'm a bread maniac. There's nothing that tastes better than bread fresh from the oven, but I rarely baked it since it took too long and inevitably left me with too much bread. About a year ago I bought a book called "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg. They've developed a method where you mix up a master batch of bread dough and store it in the fridge. It's a pretty wet dough so it mixes up easily with just a large spoon. No fancy stand mixer required (although I still want to get one!). When you want to bake bread, take out a piece of dough and shape it, let it sit for an hour or two and then bake it. There's no kneading involved, so it really is about as easy as using a bread machine, and the results are a lot tastier.
The key to the recipe is the high water to flour ratio. This enables the gluten to develop more easily without any kneading. Other food writers have published similar high hydration recipes, but this one is the easiest. The dough is baked in a hot (450F) oven on a baking stone. It can also be used for pizza dough, calzones, foccacia, etc. The bread is somewhat dense, with great flavor and a very nice crust. I usually just use the master recipe but have also made the semolina and rye bread variations.
The question that I've gotten is whether it's really "5 minutes a day" Well, not exactly. There's a lot of resting and baking time in there, but very little prep or cleanup time. I wish that all the syntheses I do in the lab were this quick! It takes about 5 minutes to mix the dough. After that you let it sit at room temperature for two hours. At that point you can take some out and bake it, and/or pop the whole bowl in in the fridge. When you make the bread, you pull out a ball of dough (usually 1 lb, or 1/4 of the master recipe) and shape it. This takes a minute or two. Then it rises for a while. When it's ready to bake, slash a few slits in the top and put it in the preheated oven. So the actual "active time" really is about five minutes on the days you make the dough or bake a loaf.
When I get my fancy stand mixer, I'll go back to making breads that need a lot of kneading, but for now I'm pretty happy with my lazy bread.