2. Overnight Refrigerator Pastry Dough Recipe

This recipe from our archives is the perfect base overnight dough for any of your favorite pastries. It does well sweet, savory, and even lightly laminated! Check out the original refrigerator pastry dough recipe, which also contains Wendy Akin’s recipes for cinnamon pecan sticky buns, french raisin snails, and Italian Panettone minis, the pastry we make in this video.

In this video, we also tried this pastry dough as the base for a savory jalapeno cheddar pull-apart bread, also known as “monkey” bread.

Can’t find candied lemon peel in store either? Try making your own using Akin’s candied citrus peel recipe.

Monkey Bread Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 Recipe refrigerator pastry dough
• 1/2 cup pickled jalapenos, diced and pat dry
• 2 cups cheese, shredded
• 1/2 cup butter, melted

Directions

1. Turn out the dough onto a floured board. Pat out and knead in the jalapenos.
2. Form the dough into a log and cut into small pieces, sized to be individual bites.
3. Prepare 2 loaf pans or 1 tube pan with butter and flour. Toss the dough balls with shredded cheese and arrange in pan. Pour melted butter evenly over the dough in the pan(s).
4. Cover loosely with a towel and let rise till doubled. Bake at 350 degrees until internal temperature reads 190 degrees (40-50 minutes, depending on your pan).
5. At the 30 minute mark, check to see if the top of your bread has browned. You may need to cover your bread with foil if it is browning too fast.
6. Remove from oven. Allow to cool 5 minutes, then invert onto a plate or board. Best served hot!

You can use any sweet or savory fillings to make monkey bread. Roll plain dough in cinnamon and sugar for cinnamon roll monkey bread, or mix olives and feta into the dough and toss the bites with Parmesan, or mix chives into the dough and toss with sesame seeds and garlic butter; the possibilities are endless!

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Alyssa Warner: This overnight refrigerator dough for American and European pastries is from Wendy Aken, a Texas farmer and regular Mother Earth News recipe contributor. She writes many recipes of classic kitchen staples, including biscotti, lemon marmalade, blue ribbon-winning pickles, traditional Christmas stollen, and more.

[00:00:19] I discovered this one in May, and since then, I’ve made it a habit to keep a couple of batches wrapped up in the freezer to be unfrozen overnight for surprise guests or special occasions. It works well with sweet or savory recipes, and can even handle being roughly laminated with butter. This base dough recipe can be made into all manner of pastries.

[00:00:39] Aken shared cinnamon pecan sticky buns, French raisin snails, and the Italian panettone minis that we will be making today. We’re also gonna be making a jalapeno cheese monkey bread, an adaptation of my creation, to give you both a sweet and a savory sharable bread for all your holiday [00:01:00] get-togethers.

[00:01:00] We’re gonna make the dough for our overnight pastry. Now, this dough is gonna be a little strange. This is one of those where you read the recipe and you follow along, and you just trust the process. The dough, when it comes together, is gonna be a little more like a batter. It’s gonna be incredibly soft and impossible to work with and knead.

[00:01:24] But again, we’re just gonna trust the process because we know that Wendy is an expert. So this recipe starts with two cups of pastry flour. Now, pastry flour is a little tough to find. I do not wanna disclose how many stores I went to, but it was very many stores, and none of them had pastry flour. You can substitute for pastry flour by adding corn starch to regular flour, about two tablespoons per cup.

[00:01:51] We used half cake flour and half all-purpose flour, and this just creates a flour with a similar protein [00:02:00] content to pastry flour. And the reason that we are using pastry flour is that it has a lower protein content, and it yields a more tender crumb. I’ve made this recipe 100 times using the substitution.

[00:02:13] Either corn starch or the half cake flour, half all-purpose flour method work just fine. But maybe if there’s someone you’re baking for a special occasion, you can go ahead and order pastry flour online. So here’s our dry, so this is our sugar, our yeast, our salt, and our two cups pastry flour substitute

[00:02:38] And we’re just gonna sift this together

[00:02:52] You do a little bit of mixing by hand

[00:02:59] And [00:03:00] then we’re gonna take this hot water and butter mixture and we are going to add it into our pastry flour

[00:03:18] Now we’re gonna go ahead and let that beat together for about one minute. Okay, now that has all been combined together by the way, I’m sure you noticed, but just in case you haven’t and you’re just listening we are using the paddle attachment and not the dough hook All right, so now that’s all mixed together, we’re gonna go in ahead and add the rest of our wet ingredients.

[00:03:45] So it’s gonna be three eggs, some orange zest, and some vanilla. Now, Wendy recommends whenever you eat an orange, if you’re not gonna be using the rind, just top off a container or a Ziploc [00:04:00] bag in your freezer of the zest if you have a minute. You can also preserve orange zest with sugar. So in we go

[00:04:24] Once that’s all combined together, we’re going to add some all-purpose flour

[00:04:54] Now that’s all combined, we’re gonna have a really strange looking dough [00:05:00] that I promise will turn out better in the morning. Now that’s done, you can go ahead and put this in an airtight container in the fridge And let it just do its thing overnight. After that, you can either bake with it or put it in an airtight container or wrap it in plastic and foil and freeze it.

[00:05:23] We’ll see you in a bit to make some panettone and jalapeno cheese bread. Here’s our overnight pastry dough that has been in the fridge. I’ve made this up to three days in advance, which I don’t know if this is particularly recommended, but it still works

[00:05:39] As you can see, it’s really risen

[00:05:47] And I’m just gonna sprinkle some flour on top and dump the whole thing out. This is a double recipe, and we’re gonna use it to make the Italian panettone, and we’re going to use it to make the jalapeno cheese bread. Whoo, [00:06:00] look at that dough. Let’s get all of this out

[00:06:10] So there’s our double recipe of our overnight refrigerator pastry I’m gonna roll it out onto a floured surface and gently cut it in half

[00:06:33] And I’m gonna take the one that we’re going to use for the cheese bread and I’m gonna set it aside. Thank you. And we’re gonna take the one we’re using to make the panettone and bring it over here

[00:06:52] All right. So gently pat this into a rectangle. [00:07:00] Now, full disclosure, the recipe calls for half a cup of candied lemon peel, but that was basically impossible to find in the, in Topeka, Kansas. You can find it in some specialty stores, but it’s something that you really have to make yourself if you want access to it, and we have a recipe, and I’m gonna link it down below.

[00:07:19] We are substituting with candied crystallized ginger. Panettone is a fancy Italian fruit bread, and it’s a very popular thing in the holidays. You can add candied nuts, any kind of candied fruit, currants. Today we’re gonna be using golden raisins and that candied crystallized ginger cut into strips. When I was in college, I worked at a fancy cooking store that shall not be named, and they were famous for putting out $50 panettone loaves with candied chestnuts, and you can make that yourself for way less[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] All right. So here are all my mix-ins, all my fillings and gently we’re gonna treat our dough very gently so as not to deflate it We’re gonna go ahead and fold

[00:08:16] Fold it all in

[00:08:26] We also wanna be careful not to add too much flour at this point, but a little’s gonna get put in there to avoid sticking anyway Now, once you have this roughly mixed together and all folded in, oof, go ahead and roll it out into a log

[00:08:53] and divide that log into 12 muffins[00:09:00]

[00:09:03] Sometimes it takes a minute because we’re trying to be gentle

[00:09:15] And that means in half

[00:09:21] And then again in half

[00:09:26] And then into thirds. And then you’re gonna take your dough and you’re gonna fold it into kind of a disc, and then you’re gonna pull the corners of that disc, the edges in, until you have a tight little ball

[00:09:55] And that we’re gonna stick in a buttered muffin tin[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] and allow it to rise till it’s doubled in size. I find that takes about 40 minutes

[00:10:11] If this dough has been in your fridge for more than a day, you might not see so much rise at this proofing stage. And after 40 minutes, even if it hasn’t doubled, go ahead and bake anyway. You can line these with parchment Or with muffin tins, but we’re just gonna put butter

[00:10:44] All right. And those are our little panettones. We’re gonna let them rise. So using the same dough, we’re going to make a savory jalapeno cheese bread. So this is a pull-apart bread. I grew up with these being called monkey bread[00:11:00]

[00:11:02] And the idea is it’s great for parties because everyone can just grab pieces off of your warm loaf without needing any additional garnishes. You’re probably very familiar with cinnamon sugar, cinnamon roll type monkey bread, but it works really well with cheesy pastries

[00:11:27] Here’s the second half of our pastry dough. And we’re gonna do the same thing. We’re gonna pat it out into a rectangle And fold in these chopped jalapenos

[00:11:48] Look at how easy that is to work with[00:12:00]

[00:12:06] Okay. And once that filling is folded throughout the dough

[00:12:16] Careful since the jalapenos are wet. The dough might get a little sticky

[00:12:30] You can flour your pastry cutter as well. And we’re just gonna cut diagonally little bite-sized pieces of dough Even this is a little bit big

[00:12:48] Now You wanna work in layers with this bread[00:13:00]

[00:13:02] Because you wanna make sure that there is cheese around all the different pieces

[00:13:12] So now that we have one layer in, we’re gonna go ahead and sprinkle some cheese

[00:13:24] And then

[00:13:29] Continue to work through This recipe also works really well in a tube pan like a Bundt pan. Not necessarily because it’s pretty, but because it’s great for parties. When you invert your tube pan, there’s a little hole in the middle, and you can stick a bowl of dip right in the center. Extra nacho cheese with your jalapeno cheese bread And we’re gonna do another layer of [00:14:00] cheese

[00:14:12] The cheese is gonna melt and lose volume, so make sure you fill generously all those nooks and crannies

[00:14:26] You can use a block of cheese, but I like to use shredded because the starch that they put on the cheese to help it help them stay as individual little shreds also helps to keep these little pieces of dough from just squishing together and becoming just a normal bread. And you work so hard to cut it up and layer it up, you want it to be You want it to be a good monkey bread.

[00:14:53] This kind of bread also works with feta and Kalamata olives. It works really well [00:15:00] with chives and sesame seeds. Really, your imagination is the limit. Okay. And then the last round here

[00:15:20] And there we go. We’re gonna let this rise For about 40 minutes as well. And right before it goes in the oven, we’re gonna go ahead and put some butter, about half a cup of butter poured evenly all over the top of this, and that is also gonna help to make sure that the individual pieces don’t stick together.

[00:15:45] We’ll see you in 40 minutes. Here’s the panettone. It’s gonna s- They’re a hard crust now, but they’ll soften up as they cool. La. And here’s that pull-apart bread. Monkey see, monkey [00:16:00] do. And you’re gonna turn that over and serve it

[00:16:08] But maybe use a slightly bigger pan. I really like these panettone minis. I used to work at one of those crazy fancy cooking stores, and we would sell this bread for $60 a tin. But this is pretty crazy easy to do yourself, and this is the first recipe that I’ve ever tried that was soft enough to compare with those professional versions.

[00:16:33] Now, when you’re done with your jalapeno cheese bread, if you’ve made it in a Bundt pan or if you’ve made it in two loaf pans when it’s still warm, and it’s vital that it’s still warm, otherwise you’re gonna have a bit of trouble, you’re going to want to flip it over so that you can serve it[00:17:00]

[00:17:09] Ta-da. And look at that beautiful bread. My favorite thing about making a pull-apart bread, whether it’s this jalapeno cheese version or maybe a cinnamon a cinnamon brown sugar version, is that if you do it in a Bundt pan, you can get a little bowl, you can fill it with your favorite dipping sauce. For this one I’d probably do queso or a spicy cream cheese mixture.

[00:17:32] And you can just set it right in the middle, and it’s so fancy. Your guests will all be extremely impressed when you bring your pull-apart bread