"Because you can get a recipe for French onion soup anywhere, I made a point to not include one in this book. Still, I cannot deny its appeal. The thing is that with every bowl of French onion I’ve ever slurped, what I enjoy most is the little crouton at the top soaked with sweet, rich broth and lacquered with broiled cheese.So in lieu of the soup itself, I give you a Bundt pan full of oniony bread. Monkey bread, also known as a pinch-me loaf, is often a sweet pullapart treat where small balls of dough are coated in butter, cinnamon, and sugar then proofed and finally baked together. It comes out of the oven and everybody gathers ’round to pinch off gooey morsels from the group. Pinch Me, Frenchie is just that, except the plump little yeast rolls are rolled in R-Rated Onions, butter, and cheese. It’s not dessert, but it could be.I’ve chosen to bake this in a Bundt pan because monkey bread is a communal, get-allthe- fingers-in-there kind of thing. But you could do this in a couple muffin tins to give your pinchers individual servings to work with. Just decrease the baking time by about 7 minutes if you go that route." — Vivian Howard, celebrated chef and part of the Friends of Milk Street network.From. "This Will Make It Taste Good: A New Path to Simple Cooking" (Voracious, October 2020).
Ingredients
R-Rated Onions
- 4-5 large yellow onions
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
Bread
- 2 teaspoons instant dry yeast
- 1½ cups warm water
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 3½ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 cup R-Rated Onions
- 1½ sticks unsalted butter - melted, ¾ cup
- 1 tablespoon picked thyme leaves
- 1 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- 2 cups shredded cheese - Fontina, provolone, or Gouda
Instructions
Make the caramelized onions
- Peel your onions and cut them in half through their stem ends—longways, if you will.
- Slice them thinly with the grain, following the line from root to stem rather than cutting the onion across its belly. This is actually important because slicing it the other way makes the path to silky onions a longer one.
- Once your onions are sliced, heat your skillet over medium-high heat and add the oil, then the onions and the salt.
- Let the onions sizzle for a couple of minutes. Stir with a wooden spoon or a heatproof spatula and watch as they wilt for about 3 more minutes.
- At this point, reduce the heat to medium-low. Put a lid on and step away for a few minutes.
- Give the onions a stir every now and then. You don’t have to stand over it like risotto, but don’t go for a walk around the block either. Caramelized bits will accumulate at the bottom and sides of the pan, and that’s good. Just scrape them up and stir them in. A little color building as you go is okay, but don’t rush to brown them. The point is to cook the onions gently, coaxing them through stages of raw, wilted, sweaty, soft, light brown, and finally deeply caramelized.
- About 45 minutes in, remove the lid for the last time. They should be a light caramel color.
- Now, with the lid off, you will need to watch more closely and stir more frequently.
- At some point, you may find that despite your best efforts some of the caramelized bits, verging on burnt, cling to the pan and threaten overall onion ruin. Do not fret! Just add a ½ cup or so of water and use its energy to help scrape up the stubborn but tasty film. Let the water cook out of course.
- When you’re smiling over a soft, creamy, fragrant pile of mahogany onions, you’re done.
Make the dough
- In a large bowl or in a standing mixer fitted with the dough hook, mix the yeast and warm water and let it sit for 5 minutes.
- Add the olive oil, flour, and salt. Mix with your hands or the hook until the dough comes together and is homogenous and elastic, about 3 minutes.
- Coat the inside of a large bowl with cooking spray and dump the dough into it.
- Cover with a towel and put it in a sunny window or a generally warm spot in your kitchen. Let it rest and rise for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
Prepare the onions and cheese
- While the dough proofs, mix the R-Rated Onions in a bowl with the melted butter and thyme.
- In another bowl, stir together the cheeses.
From the dough
- Once the dough is twice as big as it was, flour your hands and punch that dough back down where it belongs.
- Spray the inside of a Bundt pan with the cooking spray.
- Pinch off a ½-inch round of dough and roll between your hands to make it a little more round. Then roll it in the butter onions, followed by the cheese.
- Lay that down in the bottom of your Bundt pan and start doing the same thing with the rest of the dough.
- When you have one layer of dough balls down, sprinkle about one-third of the remaining cheese and one-third of the remaining butter onions over the top.
- Then pinch, roll, double-douse, and place the remaining balls over top. If you end up with extra cheese or extra butter onions, distribute those on top of the whole monkey.
Let it rise, then bake
- Cover the Bundt pan with a towel and let the dough rise another 15 minutes.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Transfer the Bundt pan to the middle rack of your oven and bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until nicely browned on top.
- Bring Pinch Me, Frenchie out of the oven and let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes before you even think about turning it out of its pan. The cheese needs to cool and firm up a bit in order for the loaf to hold together.