
Cheese-Stuffed Monkey Bread
Rosemary-garlic infused monkey bread oozes with Jahrlsberg cheese–a decadent twist to savory pull-apart bread! Adding chopped salami takes this Cheese-Stuffed Monkey Bread over the top.
I‘ve lost track of how many times I’ve made savory monkey bread since I first baked this addictive pull-apart bread in November.
Despite various flavor improvisations, Eliza’s specialty, a combination of lemon, rosemary, and garlic, remained my favorite until only just recently. Previously, whenever I experimented — replacing the rosemary with thyme or changing it up entirely by using parsley, shallots, and poppy seeds instead — I always found myself wishing I’d stuck with our original recipe.
I finally vowed to do just that, and I meant to, really I did. It’s just that, one afternoon while making dough for monkey bread, I found myself wondering what it would taste like stuffed with cheese. Cheese-stuffed monkey bread was bound to be a winner.
I’m not a vow-breaker by nature, but I’ve had a long relationship with cheese-stuffed bread. I felt certain I wouldn’t be disappointed if I tinkered with the recipe just one last time.
The more I thought about it, the more confident I became that this new iteration would perfectly combine two of my favorite foods — cheese zombies and savory monkey bread.
I stuffed three dozen small pieces of soft, supple dough with cheese and drenched them in garlic-rosemary olive oil. When I finally put my bundt pan in the oven, the 35-minute baking time felt like an eternity.
I could hardly wait to pluck off that first warm, tender hunk of bread.
I should have had more patience, though, since cheese, not surprisingly, transforms into a fiery molten mass after hanging out in an oven for half an hour at 375° F.
Despite my seriously burned tongue, I felt ecstatic: rosemary-garlic infused bread oozing with flavorful cheese tasted even better than I imagined.
Of course, I couldn’t resist more tinkering. I stuffed monkey bread with different cheeses — Colby-Jack, cheddar, Jarlsberg, Gruyere — all the while playing with the flavors in the oil, not to mention throwing a bit of cured meat into the mix.
I haven’t yet felt disappointed by any of my cheese-stuffed variations, though I do now have a clear favorite: rosemary-garlic-cayenne monkey bread stuffed with Jarlsberg cheese and salami.
It sounds like a mouthful, I know. I’m calling it zombie monkey bread for short.

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