Fluffy, spongy and feathery light chocolate pull apart bread made with a chunk of butter a good deal of cocoa and some love. The perfect companion!

For some obscure reason pull apart breads are mostly thought to be savory snacks filled with cheese, herbs, butter and garlic. Sometimes other wild ingredients are also sneaked between the layers creating wild and delicious breads like a pizza pull apart bread.

While these are pretty tasty things and perfect snacks for parties or game nights there is another side of the kneading bowl too. There is, of course a treat for hot chocolate and coffee to enjoy, like this nowadays popular cinnamon pull apart bread. It’s so fascinating to see that how cinnamon and cocoa is fighting with each other on various pastries sometimes losing ground other times declaring victories on the other.

Pull apart bread comes it various shapes and forms. Probably the most popular in the US is the well-known Monkey Bread that has nothing to do with monkeys nor much with the originally cinnamon and sugar free recipe.

The today so popular monkey bread actually is a Hungarian dessert called “Golden Dumplings” (Arany Galuska) brought over the US by Jewish immigrants in the end of the 1800. At one point of time it was widely sold across the states in pastry shops hence became popular.

Given Arany Galuska unpronounceable name and similarity in shape to monkey bread, by the passing of years it inherited the name and posed as an easily pronounceable dessert through modern America.

Doubtless monkey bread with their cinnamon fillings are hard to beat, unless it is challenged with some crazy idea like rolling the dumplings into pizza sauce and making pizza monkey bread. Or leaving the bundt form behind and sailing to the square bread pan territory.

This recipe does just that. It’s using a well-established long form baking tin that can be rectangular or semi-circle profiled. Actually, it doesn’t really matter as long as we can cut the dough into it without letting the pieces sliding off or being stuck too snuggly on each other.

If the slices are put together too tight the dough will raise together to the extent, we won’t have a pull apart bread anymore but just a bread. It doesn’t need trenches between the layers to accommodate the growth either, just place them next to each other like people sit on the subway during peak time.

Before getting on the train though the dough needs some good company to spend time with, otherwise it will be too bland a journey. They say the best friendships are made during hardships so we have to beat together the room temperature butter, some honey and the cocoa powder.

If the butter isn’t soft enough it won’t mix well with the cocoa nor spread well on the dough. Force spreading the cold hard butter can cause the dough to stick to the worktop and deformation. This will make it hard to pick up the slices leading them to stretch making the transfer into the baking tray frustrating and tearful experience.

This recipe uses honey as a natural sweetener and fairly small amount of that to avoid any unnecessary calories but staying sweet enough for a bread. Tastes differ though so the level of sweetness can be set to individual levels by adding or taking the amount used without affecting the texture of the bread. As a sweet surprise dried and diced fruits can also be sprinkled on the chocolate layer to lighten the moment up.

Ingredients

Dough

2½ cup / 300g Flour
2 tablespoons / 25g Butter
1 Egg
½ cup / 120ml Milk
0.4 oz / 10g Fresh yeast

Filling

4 tablespoon / 50g Butter
1 tablespoon / 15g Honey
3 tablespoons / 25g Cocoa powder (unsweetened)

Kitchen utensils:

8½” x 3″ / 22cm x 7.5cm Baking tray

How to make Chocolate pull-apart bread

Knead together flour, sliced butter, eggs, milk and crumbled yeast.
Cover the bowl and leave it in a 68°F – 81°F /20°C – 27°C place for about 30 – 90 minutes to double or at least rise.

Filling

In the meantime, prepare the filling. Put butter, honey and cocoa powder into a medium bowl, whisk them together and leave the cream on the side ready to be spread.

Assembly

On a floured work surface roll the dough into a 12 inch / 30cm square. Flouring underneath the dough is important as this coating will prevent it to stick down.
Spread the coat of butter, cocoa and honey combo evenly on the top of the dough.

Cut the square into 4 equal strips and put them on top of each other. This may be trickier as it sounds if the dough sticks to the counter. Use a plastic scraper to help getting the dough off the worktop if it’s necessary. The dough is quite soft so try not to pull it much more than necessary.
When they are evenly on top of each other cut them into as wide rectangles as the baking heights of the tin.
Fill up the tin rather loosely. If it’s packed too tight the dough will bake together and we won’t be able to tear it.
Leave it under a clean kitchen cloth for another 20 minutes to rise then pop it into the preheated 365°F / 180°C oven for half an hour.
In some cases they can be baked earlier, in other ovens it would take 40 minutes to be ready. So it is worth to check after 25 minutes. Get a fork or a toothpick and poke the bread if no dough is left on the toothpick we can turn off the oven and take the bread out.

Leave it cool down a bit before serving. Enjoy!

Chocolate pull-apart bread is tasty and fun to make but there are always more to explore and enjoy:

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