Recipe: Monkey bread (savory)

After the roaring success of the first monkey bread last week, the ideas got spinning.  The most obvious and immediately doable would be a savory version - the rough plan was to simply replace the butter with olive oil and the sugar and spices with herbs, pepper and salt.  We were going to a large potluck, so I divided the dough into smaller pieces to make sure the bread would break up enough to serve everyone.  Since I put herbs in the dough, at the rolling stage, I just used olive oil, but when I coated the bundt pan, I dusted it with coarse cracked pepper, kosher salt and kalonji (onion seed).  The result was great - very focaccia-like.  Whether it was the smaller balls or the olive oil, the bread tore apart slightly less easily, not a problem, still a great bread, but next time I might go back to the larger balls and use butter in the rolling just to see - definitely keep the olive oil in the dough though.  There are a few changes in the recipe other than the obvious - there's more salt, so I kept some sugar to feed the yeast,  and to make it more bread-like, I used more flour to get a dryer dough.

divide and roll

You will need:

14oz / 400g              milk (homo)

1 Tbs / 0.3oz / 8.5g  instant yeast (or 10.3g active dry yeast or 25.5g fresh)

1/3oz / 10g               sugar

19.6oz / 555g           flour

0.4oz / 10g               kosher salt

1 tsp / 0.5g               dry oregano

1 tsp / 0.5g               dry rosemary (crushed or chopped fine)

1 tsp / 0.5g               cracked black pepper

4 Tbs / 43g              olive oil

prepare the pan

For the pan:  

olive oil

coarse cracked black pepper

kalonji (onion seed)

For the rolling:

olive oil

Method:

layer up the dough

 - warm up the milk and bloom the yeast with a bit of the sugar (if necessary)

 - if using instant yeast, add it to the flour and salt

 - in a mixer, combine the milk, yeast, olive oil, herbs and pepper 

 - add in the flour mixture and mix until you get a smooth dough that comes away from the side of the bowl

 - turn the dough out on a floured surface and round it up

 - coat a bowl with a bit of olive oil, place the dough in and cover to proof in a warm place

 - prepare the bundt pan with olive oil, salt, pepper and kalonji

 - once doubled in size, turn the dough out on a floured surface, punch it down and divide it up

Shaolin wanted to help this time

 - roll the balls, coat in olive oil, and layer into the pan

 - cover and return to a warm place to proof up again

 - set oven to 340F / 171C

 - once doubled in size again, set the pan in the oven and cook 40-45 minutes - rotate if necessary 

 - remove from oven, let rest a moment, then turn out onto your serving dish

ready for the oven

 - serve warm

ready to eat