This is the thread. Post your questions here, post your photos here, post your panic here. I'm around all morning. Yeasted: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/monkey-bread Sourdough: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/sourdough-monkey-bread Where we are right now. Sourdough crew, your dough came out of the fridge cold and firm. That's exactly right. Press it into a rough rectangle about an inch thick, cut it into strips, then across into about 55 pieces. It'll cut clean. That's your reward for last night. If yours feels softer than you expected, don't add flour. Work in halves. Cut the dough in two in the bowl, leave one half in the fridge while you portion and coat the other. Soft dough warms up fast on the counter and gets stickier the longer it sits out. Working in halves keeps you ahead of it. Yeasted crew, you're mixing now. Flour, milk, eggs, sugar, salt, yeast. Then butter, slow, one tablespoon at a time. When it looks broken and greasy, keep going. That's the fat dispersing and it always looks like that. Thirty seconds later it comes back smooth. Two bowls side by side for coating. Melted butter in one, cinnamon sugar in the other. Butter first, sugar second, sheet pan to hold them. That assembly line is what keeps this from taking all morning. Don't pack the pan. Loose layers. The gaps are what let the caramel run down through the loaf. Cast iron instead of a bundt? Don't preheat it. Build cold, proof in it, bake in it. The two things that decide this bake are coming later this morning. The thermometer and the flip. I'll post about both at 12:30. For now, just get your pieces cut and coated. Post as you go. Even if it's ugly. Especially if it's ugly. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

I meant to get this to you last night. Didn't happen. So here it is now, and here's the good news first. You're probably fine. If you're worried because you didn't feed your starter last night, take a breath. The levain build IS a feed. Twenty grams of starter into a hundred grams of flour is a 1:5 ratio, and that's a real refresh. As long as your starter has been fed sometime in the last few days and isn't dead in the back of your fridge, you can build right now and it'll work. It might take an hour or two longer to ripen. That's all. Only two of you need to do something different. If your starter has been sitting unfed for a week or more, feed it now at 1:2:2 and build your levain this afternoon instead. You'll mix around nine tonight instead of six, and Saturday morning shifts back an hour. Still works. And if your starter just isn't where you want it, bake the yeasted version tomorrow. Same bread, four hours, no timeline. There's no shame in that. It's the smart call. Now here's the whole thing. Friday, 8:00 AM. Build the levain. Twenty grams of mature starter, sixty grams of room temperature water, a hundred grams of bread flour. Stir the starter into the water first so it disperses, then work in the flour until you've got a stiff, shaggy ball. Cover it. Leave it at 75 to 78F. That's a stiff levain at sixty percent hydration, and I picked that on purpose. A wet, slack levain pushes acid. A stiff one ferments slower and stays sweeter. In a loaf carrying this much sugar, you want the tang present but not fighting. It's ready in six to ten hours when it's roughly doubled, domed on top, and smells sweet and yogurty instead of sharp. Friday, 6:00 PM. Mix. All 180 grams of levain, warm milk, eggs, then the flour, sugar, and salt. Mix, then feed the butter in slow, a tablespoon at a time. This takes longer than a yeasted dough. Be patient with it. Aim for a finished dough temp of 78 to 80F. Friday, 6:30 to 9:00 PM. Bulk. Two to three hours at 76 to 78F, with a set of folds at forty five minutes and again at ninety. You want it grown by about half. Not doubled. It finishes rising in the pan tomorrow.

This Saturday we're pulling bread apart with our hands. Monkey bread. Soft enriched dough torn into pieces, rolled through melted butter and cinnamon sugar, stacked in a bundt pan, and baked under a brown sugar caramel until the whole thing fuses into one loaf you tear at instead of slice. Here's why I picked it. There's no shaping to fumble. No scoring. No ear to chase. Uneven pieces are the entire point, which means nobody's loaf can come out wrong this week. If you've been reading along thinking you're not ready to jump in yet, this is your week. Pull up a chair. Two versions. Pick your lane. 🙈 Yeasted, about four hours start to finish on Saturday morning: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/monkey-bread 🙉 Sourdough, built on a stiff levain with an overnight cold retard: https://recipepantry.app/recipes/sourdough-monkey-bread If you're going sourdough, your work starts Friday. Build the levain Friday morning around 8:00. Mix the dough Friday evening around 6:00, bulk it until 9:00, then it goes in the fridge overnight. Saturday morning you cut and coat at 8:00, proof until about 11:00, and it comes out of the oven a little before noon. Don't skip that cold retard. It isn't only about flavor. Cold dough cuts clean. Warm enriched dough turns into a greasy mess when you're handling 55 pieces with buttered hands. Ask me how I know. There are exactly two places this bread goes wrong. The center. A bundt full of dough balls is a lot of mass, and the outside looks finished long before the middle is. Thermometer through the side, 190 to 200F. Color lies on this bake. The flip. Eight to ten minutes in the pan, then invert. Wait longer and that caramel sets like glue and you're chiseling your loaf out in pieces. Set a timer the second it leaves the oven. You'll want a bundt pan, 10 to 12 cup. Don't have one? A 9x5 loaf pan gives you a sliceable version and a 10-inch cast iron skillet gives you crispier edges. Both work fine.