Breakfast Loaves

This is monkey bread by another name. Frozen bread dough gets torn into chunks, layered in a greased pan, and drenched in a sticky sauce made from melted butter, brown sugar, milk, cinnamon, and vanilla or butterscotch pudding mix. After an hour of rising and 25 minutes in the oven, you flip it out warm and pull it apart.

The pudding mix is the secret ingredient that makes this different from standard monkey bread. It thickens the butter-sugar sauce into a caramel-like glaze that coats every piece of dough and pools into sticky pockets between the chunks.

Using two loaves of frozen dough and filling any gaps with the second loaf means a tightly packed pan with no bare spots. Every piece is coated, every piece is connected, and every piece pulls away with strings of caramel.

Pro Tips

• Thaw the frozen dough completely before tearing. Partially frozen dough tears unevenly and doesn’t absorb the sauce.
• Let it rise for a full hour after assembly. The dough needs time to puff up and fill the pan, or the finished bread will be dense.
• Flip it out of the pan while it’s still warm. The caramel sauce hardens as it cools and will cement the bread to the pan.
• Spread any sauce that stays in the pan back over the top.

Variations

• Use butterscotch pudding mix instead of vanilla for a deeper, more toffee-like flavor.
• Add chopped pecans to the bottom of the pan before adding the dough for a sticky pecan roll.
• Sprinkle raisins between the dough chunks for a cinnamon raisin version.