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Bacon Monkey Bread brings together all the best flavors of Fall: butternut squash, caramelized onions, bacon, and bacon jam in a soft pull-apart bread.

If you love savory breads, I can’t think of a better one. I love this bread served with some fig jam on the side. It’s a nice sweet foil to the rich bacon and blue cheese. This bread happened because I saw a lonely piece of discounted Point Reyes blue cheese at my grocery store. My oldest son, lover of everything bacon was over the moon for this bread.

This would be an incredible charcuterie accompaniment or a Thanksgiving appetizer!

The best thing is that all the time in this bread is passive. Make the dough and the caramelized onions before you go to bed. The next day, you can put together the bread at your leisure in about 10 minutes. And just like with my Pesto Monkey Bread, your house will smell amazing as this bakes.

So crack open the pinot noir and let’s make a bacon monkey bread that properly celebrates Fall.

Bacon Monkey Bread

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Why you’ll be saving this recipe pronto

So much savory flavor: easy caramelized onions, bacon, blue cheese and butternut squash all packed into a tempting pull-apart bread.
Walk away easy: I love the “Set it and forget it” mentality with baking. It’s one of the ways I time hack. Using a slow cooker to do the annoying work of caramelizing the onions perfectly and the fridge to firm up the soft dough, you can literally do a million other things instead of babysitting your recipe.
This is grownup monkey bread: With all the flavors going on here, this bread is great for pairing with wine. Some pinot noir, Gewurztraminer, or Prosecco are all tasty thoughts. As such, I think this bread would be a welcome addition to a New Year’s Eve menu or a book club night.

Things you’ll need to make some Bacon Monkey Bread

Dough

Water
Instant yeast
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
Canned butternut squash puree
Butter (57 g)
Salt
Eggs
All-purpose flour (390 g)

Filling

Yellow onions
Butter
Thick cut bacon
Bacon jam (you can substitute apricot jam)
Blue cheese

Time hack your way to the best Bacon Monkey Bread

As you glance at the recipe card, it might weird you out that I’m listing 13 solid hours to make this bread. Be not worried, dear reader; most of that is lazy people time. Here’s how I make this time without sweating.

Use a slow cooker: I know there’s better people than me who have perfect patience to sit and painstakingly cook onions over a whisper of a flame, always stirring until they are the perfect jammy copper pieces of caramelized magic. I burn them every.single.time. I’ve tried all the methods, and all of them are annoying and take too much pot minding for me. Toss your onions in the slow cooker and neglect them while you go to bed. You will wake up to almost perfectly caramelized onions without any of the sweaty heat management and constant stirring.
Use the fridge: Similarly, this dough is based on my favorite overnight roll dough. Letting the dough rise overnight in the fridge helps eliminate most of the stickiness, improves the flavor, and let’s you make bread when you want to.
Hide the bacon?: If you wanted to, you could make the bacon ahead of time too, though wrap it and stash it in a hidden place in the fridge if you do so. The smell of bacon is a siren call in my house. I usually make bacon right before I put this bread together. It doesn’t add too much to the workflow this way.

Do these 3 things, and you can make this bread around any kind of chaos that’s happening in the kitchen.

Bacon Monkey Bread

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Author: Elizabeth Farr
Total Time: 13 hours
Yield: 24 portions

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Description

All the savory flavors of Fall are here: butternut squash, bacon, blue cheese and caramelized onions. This is party food to the max.

Ingredients

Scale

Dough

1/4 cup warm water (59 mL)
2 tsp instant yeast
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
3/4 cup canned butternut squash puree
4 Tablespoons butter (57 g)
3/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs, cold
3 cups all-purpose flour (390 g)

Filling

2 large yellow onions
2 Tablespoons butter (28 g)
6 oz thick cut bacon (170 g)
1/2cup jarred bacon jam (you can substitute apricot jam) (160 g)
6 oz blue cheese (170 g)

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Instructions

Make the dough

Sprinkle the yeast on the warm water in a small bowl with the sugar. Set aside for about 5 minutes until the yeast is foamy.
Melt the butter in a small pan, then mix in the butternut squash puree.
Crack your eggs and use a fork to whip them into the squash and butter mixture, then add in the, salt.
Put the flour into a large bowl or your stand mixer bowl. Make a well in the center with your hands, then pour in the squash mixture then the foamy yeast. Stir with a wooden spoon to make a rough dough.
After that, with a dough hook on your stand mixer, beat the dough for about 10 minutes on low speed (2 on a Kitchen Aid) until you get an elastic sticky dough that pulls away in strands from the sides of the bowl.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and set in the fridge to rise overnight or 4 hours minimum.

Make the caramelized onions

Thinly slice the onions, then toss into a slow cooker overnight on low.
When you wake up the next day, prop the lid about 1/3 way off and stir the onions. This will evaporate some of the liquid and help the onions get a nice jammy texture. Keep cooking them for 2-4 more hours stirring them when you think about it, until you like the onions are richly caramelized and thick. Cool them down slightly before using them.

Assemble the bread

Preheat the oven to 400 F (200 C).
Set the bacon on a parchment lined sheet tray and bake until brown and lightly crisp. If it gets too crispy, it could burn later. Drain the bacon on paper towels, then chop into square bits.
Crumble the blue cheese into a small bowl. In another bowl, mix the bacon jam and the caramelized onions.
Smear the butter all over the bottom of a bundt pan, making sure to cover all the sides and middle to grease all the nooks and crannies well. Sprinkle a little of the blue cheese in the bottom of the pan.
Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, then cut the dough into pieces about the size of a large shooter marble.
Quickly roll each piece into a ball, then place the balls into the jam mix. Roll each ball generously in the mixture, then place the coated dough balls into the pan. When you have a good layer on the bottom of the pan, cover everything with about half the cheese and a good sprinkle of the bacon.
Keep rolling and coating the balls with the rest of the filling, then top it with the rest of the blue cheese and bacon.
Cover the pan to rise for 45 minutes.
Towards the end of the 45 minutes, preheat the oven to 375 (190 C).
Bake the bread for 25-30 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and dough is golden brown.
Let the bread cool for about 5 minutes, then run a knife around the outside of the pan and the inner ring to help release the bread (the cheese likes to stick!).
Serve the bread with fig jam or apricot jam.
Bacon monkey bread is best the day you make it. Save any leftovers in the fridge, and warm it up in a 300 degree oven for 2 or 3 days after.

Notes

No bacon jam?: Bacon jam is new to me, and it took me a while to find it once I had heard about it. If you’re in the same boat, just use a good apricot jam; it pairs well with all the savory flavors without being too sweet.
Holy cow, that’s a lot of time!: don’t be weirded out by the amount of time on the card here; most of the time is completely passive. This is a bread you can work on while you’re doing many other things, making it a perfect candidate for Thanksgiving.
Fresh butternut squash or Pumpkin?: Canned butternut squash has a moisture content that’s pretty similar to the fresh puree. If you want to make fresh butternut squash puree for this recipe, halve a butternut squash and place the cut sides down on a sheet tray. Bake at 35-40 minutes until you can stick a knife through the skin easily. When the squash is cool enough to handle, scoop out the seeds and scrape the flesh into a blender or food processor. Pulse until you get a nice creamy puree. Canned pumpkin on the other hand is much drier than the butternut squash. You can sub canned pumpkin, but just use 11 Tablespoons of the pumpkin and 1 Tablespoon of water to get closer to the right amount of moisture.

Prep Time: 20
Cook Time: 30
Category: Breads
Method: Bake, slow cook
Cuisine: American

What’s your favorite savory flavor of Fall?

Bacon Monkey Bread is all the best parts of Fall