You can’t beat a classic, and this Monkey Bread Recipe is made from scratch and oh, so good!! Don’t skip the cinnamon glaze – you’ll be licking it from your fingers!

I love going back to the basics. I have a few basic recipes here on Taste and Tell – pie crust, pizza dough, chocolate chip cookies. But I think I often get caught up in what a lot of bloggers get caught up in – trying to do something totally different or never seen before. When the truth of the matter is that what most people want, what most people need, are basic recipes that they can share with their friends and family.

So here I am, getting back to basics – with this Monkey Bread Recipe with a cinnamon glaze that will make you want to lick your fingers.

Monkey Bread

Everyone loves monkey bread, am I right?? For me, you can’t beat soft, pillowy bread, covered in buttery cinnamon sugar…and this is a great one-dish recipe too! I have made several versions of this at home over the years, but when I tried this recipe, I knew I had found my go-to recipe. It was exactly what I needed in a basic, beginner’s recipe. No crazy ingredients or crazy techniques. Just basics – straight forward and easy. The only thing I changed was to add a cinnamon glaze, because I can’t have pull apart bread without a glaze!!

How to Make Monkey Bread

Since we’re doing basics, I thought I’d completely walk you through it to show you just how each step should look.

All you need are basic ingredients: flour, sugar, yeast, salt, milk, water, butter and an egg. I use rapid rise yeast not only because it speeds the process along a little bit. You only need one rise instead of two.
Mix together the dry ingredients – 2 cups of the flour, sugar, yeast and salt. I make this in my stand mixer, but if you don’t have a stand mixer, you can do this by hand. It will just take a lot more muscle power. 🙂
The milk, water and butter all go into a microwave safe bowl to get warmed up. You want this very warm, but not hot – somewhere between 120º and 130ºF. The butter won’t melt all the way, so don’t heat it up so much that the butter is completely melted. Pour this into the dry ingredients.
Don’t forget to add the egg!
This all goes on the mixer to mix for 2 minutes. You’ll want to scrape down the sides of the bowl at least once during this time.
Add another cup of flour, and beat an additional 2 minutes. It will start to come together, but will still be quite sticky.
Now you’ll start adding in just enough flour so that the dough can be pulled away from the sides of the mixer.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it until it is smooth and elastic. You can also do this with the dough hook on your mixer, but I actually enjoy kneading the dough so I always turn it out. At this point, you’ll want to cover the dough with a towel to let it rest for 10 minutes.

Now the fun part! Cut the dough into 36 pieces (I use a bench scraper to cut it) and roll them into balls. Combine cinnamon and sugar in one bowl, and melt some butter in another bowl.
Each of the pieces get dipped in the butter, then rolled in the cinnamon sugar mixture. Then into a prepared pan they go!!
Once they are all in, pour any remaining butter and cinnamon sugar over the top, then cover and allow the dough to rest until it has doubled.
When it has doubled, it should go almost to the top of the pan. Then you bake it!

Like I mentioned, the original recipe didn’t have a glaze, but I added on this cinnamon glaze and couldn’t have been happier with the decision. You’ll want to add the glaze while the bread is still warm.

My little family of 5 managed to scarf down about 3/4 of this Monkey Bread in less than an hour once it came out of the oven. And the rest of it didn’t last that much longer. This is truly the best pull apart bread recipe, and will be my go-to from here on out.

More Pull Apart & Monkey Bread Recipes

Lemon Roll Pull Apart Bread
Salted Caramel Slow Cooker Monkey Bread
Chocolate Pull Apart Bread
Hot Fudge Marshmallow Monkey Bread

Looking for more free recipes?

Subscribe to my free recipe newsletter to get new family friendly recipes in your inbox each week! Find me sharing more family-friendly inspiration on Pinterest and Instagram.