Salted Caramel and Chai Spiced Sourdough Monkey Bread
This sourdough monkey bread is spiced with chai sugar and drenched in salted caramel. The slight sourdough tang helps offset the sweet, resulting in a delicious and flavorful gooey treat.
In the stand of your mixer, combine the starter, egg, salt, melted butter, sugar and 3 cups of your flour.
Add more flour as necessary to form a ball of dough that cleans the sides of the bowl and is only slightly sticky.
Switch to the dough hook and knead 10 minutes.
Cover the bowl and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled in size (depends on your starter and temp of your house (6-8 hours). You can also place it in fridge overnight).
Generously butter your bundt cake pan.
In a medium bowl mix together the ingredients for the chai spice mixture (the sguar, and spices, save the butter for the next step) .
Sprinkle some of the sugar/spice mixture in the bottom of the pan.
In a small skillet over medium-low heat slowly melt the butter and allow to heat until browned, and smelly nutty.
Pour into a bowl and set aside.
Bring the dough back to the counter and divide into pieces about the size of ping pong balls.
Roll each piece into a ball, dip in the brown butter and roll in the spice mixture
Drop the rolls in the bundt pan and continue until all the dough is gone.
Cover the bundt pan and allow to rise in a warm place 2-8 hours or until doubled in size again (you can also put this back in the fridge and allow to rest overnight. Just let it warm to room temperature for an hour before baking).
Preheat your oven to 350 F.
Make the salted caramel sauce by heating the water and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved.
Increase the heat to high and bring to a boil, and stop stirring. Let the mixture boil until it turns amber in color (4-10 minutes).
Remove from the heat and whisk in the heavy cream (careful, it will bubble!).
Whisk in the butter, vanilla and salt.
Uncover the pan and pour the salted caramel sauce evenly over the monkey bread dough. Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until the balls are nicely browned and a toothpick inserted into it comes out clean and "feels" done.
Let the monkey bread cool in the pan for 15 minutes (or more!) before inverting it onto a serving platter. Enjoy!