It’s been a while since I made my sweet and savoury monkey bread videos. I thought that a brioche version would be perfect for Christmas, so here we go.
Monkey bread is a loaf of bread made up of many little pieces. The dough is dipped in butter and assembled in a tin for baking. The butter keeps the dough pieces from fusing together completely.
The result is a loaf of bread which can be picked apart piece by piece and eaten as a tear & share snack. I decided to infuse the butter with rosemary and dot some cranberry sauce inside the loaf. Served with a baked camembert cheese this makes for an amazing snack.
It is so irresistible. I could not stop eating this bread until it was gone.
I used half of my standard brioche dough to make this loaf. It fit perfectly in a 17.5cm (6.5in) x 7cm (2.75in) cake tin. It will also fit well in a 900g (2lb) loaf tin. You can use the whole dough to make two loaves or keep the other half for another project from the Brioche playlist.
I will not include the brioche recipe in this post. Instead, I will leave links for both the machine mixed and hand mixed versions so you can choose which one to make.
Click here for the machine mixed brioche.
Click here for the hand mixed brioche.
Watch the video down below for detailed instructions.
Ingredients
550g (1.21lb) brioche dough
250g (8.8oz) butter
3 sprigs of rosemary
80g (2.8oz) cranberry sauce
2 garlic cloves, sliced
250g (8.8oz) disc of camembert cheese
Method
- Make the brioche dough and leave to cold ferment overnight.
- Melt the butter and infuse it with the rosemary for 30 minutes.
- Roll out the dough and cut it into 2.5cm (1in) pieces.
- Dip them in the rosemary butter and arrange in a baking tin lined with non-stick paper. Dot some cranberry sauce in between the layers.
- Cover and final proof for 2.5 – 3 hours or until doubled in size. *During the final hour of fermentation preheat your oven to 160C (320F) fan on.
- Bake the loaf for 30 minutes.
- Cover with foil and bake for 30 more minutes.
- Leave to set for 15 minutes. Bake the camembert for 10 minutes whilst the loaf is cooling. You can leave the garlic out if you want.
- Remove the loaf from the tin and brush with butter to make it shiny.
- Serve with extra cranberry sauce and enjoy whilst it’s warm.
Check out some more Christmas bread recipes here.
Keep in mind that the conditions in each kitchen are different, so fermentation times may vary for you. It is up to the baker to control the bread and react accordingly.
Your oven may be different too, so your baking time may vary.
Watch the video here
