The Great British Bake Off Week Three - Monkey Bread

So it was bread week on GBBO with a few soggy bottoms, stern looks from both Mary and Paul, and plenty of scrummy looking bready bakes you could almost smell through the screen. Instead of choosing one of the bakes featured on the show I've decided to have a go at a recipe I found in the GBBO How To Bake recipe book called Monkey Bread. It says 'easy for kids' at the top so I shouldn't have a problem!

Ingredients

• 500g strong white flour
• 1½ teaspoons crushed sea salt
• 7g of fast-action dried yeast
• 150g melted unsalted butter
• 200ml lukewarm milk
• 1 room temperature egg
• 150g grated mature cheese
• ½ teaspoon dried chilli flakes

First I started by putting the flour, salt and yeast into a large bowl and then made a well in the centre. Then I melted 50g of the butter and mixed in with the milk and egg before pouring into the well. Then using my hands I mixed it all together to make a smooth dough. I actually had to use wholemeal flour as that's what I had in the cupboard and I think this made the dough quite flaky. To help it stick together I did have to keep adding a bit more milk until I was happy. If your dough is too wet or sticky, you can add more flour as well.

Now turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for approximately 10 minutes. This is always the part that I fall down on as my arms get tired or I don't do it for as long as needed which means that my bread normally isn't as light as it could be. After kneading the dough, I put it back into the bowl and covered it with cling film before leaving it to prove for about an hour. To prove, the dough needs to be left in a warm place in order for it to rise to about double the size, which is quite hard in my house because it's so cold. This meant that my dough only rose slightly which could result in a tougher or heavier loaf.

The next stage is where this recipe starts to be a little bit different. After I'd collected my proved dough, I tipped it back out onto the kitchen counter and, using scissors, cut into roughly 60 pieces. Then I rolled them in between my hands to make them into round balls, although it didn't matter that some were larger than others. Now melt the rest of the butter in one bowl and put the grated cheese and chilli flakes in another.

This is now the fun/messy part so would be great to do with kids. Take each dough ball in turn and dip it into the melted butter then cheese mixture before placing into your prepared bread tin. I used a silicon loaf tin so that no greasing was needed. Try to place the balls in evenly to make your loaf look more appealing when turning it out. About half way through I noticed that the melted butter was starting to collect in my cheese bowl, making it harder to get the cheese to stick onto the dough balls. At this point I then started to stick the cheese on using my hands and then even just sprinkled it on top of the dough balls once in the loaf tin. I felt that it was ok to improvise at this point, just make sure that you get the toppings evenly spread out!

Once you've finished that part, put the filled loaf tin into a plastic bag and then put back into your warm room or cupboard for another hour's proving. Near the end of the proving time you might want to start preheating your oven (200˚C) so that you can start baking straight away. When I collected my bread I noticed that it actually hadn't risen any more than before but luckily didn't feel heavy when I picked it up so I was still quite hopeful that it wasn't a complete disaster! I then baked it for about 35 minutes, covering with tin foil after 25 minutes as the top had started to get quite dark.

When done, take out of the oven and leave to cool. Then turn out onto a decorative plate and slice ready to serve. My bread was still warm when I was ready to serve so was delicious with some butter spread on top which then melted.

Jordan, the somewhat maverick on GBBO this year, was the baker kicked off this week but I'd like to think that the judges would admire my choice of an unknown recipe for this blog entry.

Don't forget to come back next week to see what I've attempted next...