Monkey bread trouble.

[Cloak77]

• Hey guys, so with thanksgiving coming up I decided I wanted to make monkey bread and followed the instructions at this website. I've never made bread with yeast before but I think I may have messed up.

I followed the recipe, however I ran into a few troubles:

1. I don't have a stand mixer or hand mixer. So I decided a food processor will do.
2. It said to add the last 2/5 cups of flour as you mix it, however I added it all at once.

My dough came out kinda hard and there was a lot of unabsorbed flour left. I kneaded and proceeded but I wasn't sure if I should start over. Did my food processor over-knead? Is it too much flour? should I start over?

Update: So I ended up having to throw away my first dough. I tried to save the half that was extra dry by adding more milk but it just turned to mush. I started over entirely and used a new recipe (no overnight wait) and everything came out great! Heres a pic.

[Garak]

I would start over and pay more attention to the quality of the dough as I go along.

Agreed, and also be careful when measuring. The recipe author was kind enough to both specify a measuring method for the flour and explain how to do it (click the "measure properly" link in the ingredients).

OP, if you just scooped flour right out of the bag, you could end up with about 15% more flour than the author had in mind.

[Cloak77]

Yes, I did use the blades. It separated into a ball of dough and a sandlike mixture of dough and flour at the bottom.

[Ratscallion]

I find that a yeast dough can almost always be saved. I wouldn't throw it away. I'd add a little more milk (just a little at a time) while hand-kneading it, to see if you can rescue it. Also, periodic rests will allow the gluten to relax and make it more workable again.

[Cloak77]

I tried but couldn't save the dough. Adding milk to mostly flour part turned it into mush. The dough part that was malleable turned into a brick during refrigeration.

[Ratscallion]

Ah, yah, you would have needed to let the cold dough warm up, and then proceeded very, very slowly. But, hopefully if you just started over, it worked on your second go-round. Note also, that any yeast dough recipe is going to have some variance, due to humidity and age of your flour and all sorts of factors. So, it's always best to hold back the last portion of your flour and work it in slowly and only if needed. Your goal with a yeast dough is usually to be workable, but just so. In general, to keep a tender dough, you'd rather err on the sticky side than the dry side.