Double Recipe Test: Homemade Marinara and Pepperoni Pull-Apart Bread

Pull-apart or "monkey" bread is a very popular pin. Usually it's a sweet variety, with cinnamon sugar, butter, and/or fruit. I liked the looks of this savory version from Confections of a Foodie Bride, where the bread is stuffed with cheese and pepperoni, and dipped in marinara.

Basically, you assemble some garlic butter, some pizza dough, cubes of mozzarella, and turkey pepperoni. Assemble into little balls, each coated with garlic butter. Bake in a bundt pan.

I happen to have a springform bundt pan, which was perfect. I decided to make all the little balls first, then coat them with butter all at once, because the recipe said that it gets difficult to seal them once your hands get all buttery.

The recipe also said to use about 2/3 oz. of dough per ball. I got out my scale and measured. It turned out to be bigger than the "marble-size" described, but I thought I would go with the weight instead of size. It didn't make nearly as many as described. The recipe said 48 balls, and I ended up with around 30. That should have been my first clue.

It all fit into the bundt pan just fine, though, and baked up nicely.

I also made a marinara sauce for dipping. I'm not a huge fan of canned pasta sauce, so I used this recipe for Giada's Homemade Marinara. It's based on the Food Network lady's recipe, but I found it pinned from Marble and Mud.

It's a very easy recipe. Finely chop and saute aromatics, add crushed tomatoes and herbs, simmer. Mine came together just fine. I ended up tossing it in the blender because my "finely chopped" was...not so fine. I just reheated it a bit after blending and it all worked out.  This pic is before blending. It would be perfectly fine as a pasta sauce at this consistency, but it needed a little smoothing out for dipping.

Dinner came together pretty well, the boys were all totally excited by the idea of pull-apart bread.

There was a problem, though. The same problem that plagued cupcake pizzas: a too-large dough-to-filling ratio. They ended up being very bready. Pizza dough dipped in marinara sauce isn't exactly a stellar dinner.

(Yes, that is a plastic tablecloth cover and a tumbler of wine. What?)

I think that the dough balls were too big at 2/3 oz. But if they were much smaller, I don't see how you could get them to seal correctly. I don't think I'll try this again, it's a fun concept, but I couldn't get it to turn out. The marinara was good, though, a nice go-to recipe.

Split verdict: Marinara = yum. Pull-apart bread = too doughy.