This small batch monkey bread is made in a loaf tin and a much more manageable size to serve to a family or smaller group than traditional monkey bread recipes. Perfect for when you’re at home and want a sweet dessert but don’t need to feed 10 people.
What is monkey bread? Monkey bread is a tear and share style dessert that falls somewhere in-between a cake and a bread. It originates from a Hungarian bake called aranygaluska, and was popularized in Hollywood and Washington DC. It’s similar to a cinnamon roll in that it’s an enriched dough that has cinnamon sugar and a glaze, but it’s prepared quite differently. Usually, monkey bread is made in a large Bundt pan. I chose to make this recipe a small batch monkey bread that is probably half to a third of the size and made in a standard loaf pan.
Many recipes use premade biscuits or rolls. While there is nothing wrong with that, and it certainly does make the dessert quicker and easier to bake, I love making bread (clearly). I developed this recipe starting with my Best Buttermilk Dinner Rolls recipe which is an ultra soft and fluffy bread which I thought would be excellent turned into a sweet bread.
Baking Tips
There are many size loaf pans, and what size you make this small batch monkey bread in matters. Many breads baked in a loaf pan it’s pretty easy to use similar sizes interchangeably. This is mostly true with this monkey bread.
On my first test I used a decorative 8×4.5 loaf pan (this Nordic Ware pan), and while the bread was lovely, it was a bit too much for the pan after oven spring. I then tested in a regular sided 9×5 pan. It will still puff up above the pan (which is fine) but less so. Either way, make sure to use a baking sheet with sides (like a jelly roll pan) to catch any potential spillage of the caramel sauce. Both times mine bubbled over onto the pan and saved me from having to clean the oven.
Small Batch Monkey Bread Key Ingredients
- Buttermilk – Buttermilk adds both fat and acid to help tenderize your dough which creates a super soft bread. I did try substituting buttermilk with regular milk and it worked perfectly fine. It does change the flavor ever so slightly, but if you don’t have buttermilk this will bake fine.
- Cinnamon – This small batch monkey bread is sort of similar to a sticky bun as it’s like a cinnamon roll with a caramel like sauce. I always use Vietnamese cinnamon as it just has a very powerful kick compared to Ceylon cinnamon.
- Dark Brown Sugar – We aren’t making a traditional caramel sauce but combining butter and brown sugar (with a little of our leftover cinnamon and granulated sugar) to create a sort of quick caramel to pour over the dough that it bakes in.
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Ingredients
Dough
- 330 g AP Flour 2¾ cup
- 1½ tsp Instant yeast
- 1 tsp Sea salt
- 25 g Granulated sugar 2 tbsp
- 160 g Buttermilk ⅔ cup
- 1 large Egg room temperature
- 28 g Unsalted butter 2 tbsp
Coating
- 75 g Granulated sugar ⅓ cup
- 1 tbsp Cinnamon
Caramel Sauce
- 85 g Unsalted butter 6 tbsp
- 135 g Dark brown sugar ⅔ cup
- ½ tsp Vanilla
- pinch Sea salt
Instructions
- In the bowl of your stand mixer with dough hook attached, add flour, yeast, salt, sugar, buttermilk, and egg. Mix until a rough dough forms.
- Rest the dough for 10 minutes.
- After 10 min, add your butter in two pieces and mix the dough on low until a smooth elastic dough has formed (10-20 minutes).
- Dough will be sticky but manageable. Remove dough from bowl, lightly grease the bowl. Shape dough as best as you can into a ball shape and then place back into the greased bowl. Cover and allow to proof in a warm spot for 1-2 hours or until the dough has doubled in size.
- Punch down the dough and move the dough to a workspace.
- Grease a 9×5 loaf pan generously.
- Using a bench scraper or knife, divide the dough into small chunks about 1-2 inches wide. They do not need to be identical and it's okay if some are a little smaller or larger than others. For me this was about 30-35 pieces of dough.
- Add half a cup of granulated sugar and 1 tablespoon of cinnamon to large ziplock bag or bowl.
- Loosely form your dough pieces into roundish shapes and drop them into the cinnamon sugar, completely coating them. Reserve whatever cinnamon sugar is left.
- Once all the dough balls are coated, layer them in your loaf pan.
- Cover your loaf pan and allow to proof in a warm spot for 30-60 minutes. Again the dough will have puffed up and be nearing the top of the pan.
- Preheat your oven to 350°F
- In a sauce pan, melt your butter over medium low heat. Once the butter has melted, add your brown sugar, salt, vanilla, and any leftover cinnamon sugar and stir.
- Once the mixture becomes more of a caramel sauce, carefully pour it over the dough.
- Place your loaf pan on a baking sheet (don't skip this! The caramel sauce tends to bubble up and can end up burning at the bottom of your oven) in the oven on the center rack and bake for 25-30 min.
- Remove your monkey bread from the oven and allow to cool for about 5 minutes before flipping the pan over onto a plate or serving dish.
- Enjoy while warm!
