I have a confession to make. I’m addicted to Pinterest. I haven’t started a Gluten Free Board – YET! – because I know once I do, it will just all be downhill until then. I will never have to get off my duff to be creative again. But you know what? … It is perfect reading and browsing for those of us with insomnia (or who can’t fall asleep at night because… well.. because our brains don’t shut off…).
(For those of you who are uninitiated, Pinterest is a visual version of adding bookmarks to your computer – but they remain online and accessible from wherever you have internet access.)
The truly addicting part for me, however, is NOT that I can bookmark my favorite things to do (a bucket list of crafts is what I’m accruing there) and/or teaching ideas (of which there is plethora of great ones, for those of you who teach) but several of my friends whose boards (bookmarks) I can “follow” (much like twitter or Facebook) are pinning some amazing looking food from bloggers. And OH MY – the lemon bread? Yes! It was easy to convert to gluten free so it started the ball.
Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of “pins” (as they are called) for pull-apart breads. Exactly like a Monkey Bread (I have an early (2007) gluten free recipe for a monkey bread here). The difference is mainly that pull-apart breads seem to be savory rather than sweet (although I recently made one to taste like lemonade for the girls – OH MY – do that again soon!). I knew with my previous monkey bread experience that this was totally do-able, meaning: easy for me to convert to gluten free!
The recipe below we have used for the following flavors of Pull-Apart breads and is truly only limited by your own imagination and taste buds:
Garlic and Parmesan (was a great accompaniment to our pasta: recipe below)
Lemonade (fresh lemon, lemon juice and drizzled with grated candied lemon peel and icing)
Turkey & Cheese stuffed pull Aparts (topped with garlic and parmesan)
Pepperoni Pizza Pull Aparts (stuffed with pepperoni slices and cheese, topped with pizza sauce and more cheese)
Dill and Feta Pull Aparts (added tons of dill and a bit of feta to the dough, topped with garlic and drizzled with butter)
etc….
Pepperoni-Stuffed Pizza Pull Aparts (Kid-Created: They made the dough, I stuffed, the topped)
You see the drift here: Basically whatever you want. I can’t wait to see what you guys will do with this. Please be sure to come back and inspire me too! Let me know what you make. Everyone can use the kitchen-inspiration. 😀
Gluten Free Garlic & Parmesan Pull Apart Bread
Makes one standard pie-plate of pull apart bread (about 12 balls that are 2 inches in diameter or so). Download/Print a PDF copy of this recipe here.
Basic Recipe Ingredients:
1 cup warm milk (or water or soy milk or rice milk), between 110*-115*F
1 Tablespoon yeast
1 Tablespoon honey
4 Tablespoons melted butter (for dough) + more (for rolling dough balls in)
1 egg
2 1/4 cups Gluten Free Flour Mix (70% whole grain/30% starch)
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
For Garlic-Parmesan Pull-Aparts Add:
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated garlic
1/2 cup shredded parmesan
Directions:
- Flip your pie plate upside down onto a piece of parchment paper. Trace the outer edge. Cut the parchment to fit your tracing. Flip your pie plate right side up. Lightly butter the inside bottom of your pie plate (to help the parchment stay in place). Press the now circle-shaped parchment into the pie plate. The edges will wrinkle up a bit, but they will make it so much easier to get the pull apart out of the pan when you are done.
- Preheat your oven to 375F.
- Mix together your warm milk (110*-115*F), yeast and honey. Set aside to proof.
- In the bowl of your mix, blend your dry ingredients: GF Flour mix, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt. If you are making the garlic parmesan version, add the granulated garlic now.
- Add your wet ingredients: egg, melted butter and proofing mixture (it should have foamed up by now) of milk/honey/yeast.
- Mix on low until blended. Then turn mixer up a little faster (#4 on my KitchenAid is our standard with little people helping) and mix for an additional 2-4 minutes. This is what your dough will look like.
- Melt a couple of Tablespoons of butter into a cereal bowl.
- Divide your dough into 12 balls (about 2-2 1/2 inches in diameter). Roll each in the melted butter than place into your parchment lined pie dish. Continue until all the balls are coated and placed into the pan. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese.
- Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes until the crust of the balls are golden brown and the internal temperature registers between 195-204*F. (See the picture above)
- Serve warm with an appropriate dipping sauce (if you’d like). We ate these like garlic bread (the garlic-parmesan, obviously) while our kids liked dipping them into pizza sauce and/or their favorite dipping sauce.
Enjoy!
Kate
Gluten Free Gobsmacked 
Yum they both look good, I am sure will be a big hit! My son always wants me to make the apple fried pies like mcdonalds of yours, his favorite now! Thanks!
Rose – you are so appreciated! xoxoxo
The fruit pies *are* like those! I haven’t had one in so many years – I could only remember the Hostess Fruit pies for comparison! Funny! Thanks for the memory. 😀
Kate
I love recipes that are so adaptable. I haven’t tried gluten free monkey bread, but will do this the next time all of my gluten free children come home for a visit.
Do let me know how they turn out for you! 😀
Can’t wait to try these…I can smell them baking already!!! Maybe make on the weekend!
😀 They do smell good!
Looking forward to trying these. I’m thinking dessert based also, with cooked chunky apples, cinnamon and a crumble topping. Also, peaches… oh wait I forgot about how good cherries would be in this. Yikes this is going to be a lot of baking!! 🙂
Oh – fruity ones would be great! I’ve made them as “lemonade” pull aparts (lemon zest, lemon juice + water in lieu of milk and lemon sugar, then glazed with lemon juice/powdered sugar). Loved it. I wonder what the peach one would be like! Great idea!
Ironically (without meaning to be), I pinned this blog post to my baking Pinterest board. 🙂
! i love it! Pinterest is totally addicting!
Another way to get one’s pizza fix! I love it, Kate. Nice that you had little helpers, too. 😉 The non-pizza one looks great, too. Thanks so much for this recipe!
xo,
Shirley
yes – pizza in any form is a must around me. LOL! 😀
What flour blend do you actually use??? Can’t wait to make these!!
Hi Vanessa:
I use both “my blend” linked on the tab above with the title “MY GF Flour Blend” (or here: https://glutenfree.wordpress.com/my-gf-flour-blend/) OR GF Mama’s Almond Flour Blend
Hope this helps!
Kate
I will definitely try this- your monkey bread recipe is FANTASTIC, so I know this one will be a winner, too!
Hope you love it too! 😀
Thanks for the comments/feedback, Kristina. It is really helpful (and encouraging)!
-Kate
This looks AMAZING! =) Thank you so much for sharing. I’ve been in a huge gluten free rut lately and this looks like the perfect thing to catapult me back into the world of delicious g/f delicacies.
My mouth dropped open when I saw the pull apart picture. I need not be looking at this during lunch time LOL My name is Cindy and I blog over at Vegetarianmamma.com I wanted to invite you to link up your recipe at our Gluten Free Fridays Recipe Link up party! It happens every Friday and we’d love to have you join us with some of your awesome recipes! You can find this week’s link up here: http://vegetarianmamma.com/gluten-free-fridays-recipe-party-2/
Also be sure to link up your blog on our Gluten Free Bloggers directory. You can reach the directory by clicking the “glutenfree bloggers” tab on our blog! Thanks, Cindy 🙂
oh my goodness! Your Pull Apart bread looks fantastic! I can;t wait to try it now. Your blog has been such a huge help to me with the wheat allergies that my son and I have, so I am nominating you for the One Lovely Blog & Very Inspiring Blogger Award. You can read more about it here:
http://www.beneficial-bento.com/2012/08/one-lovely-blog-very-inspiring-blogger.html
You are in no way obligated to accept this award, I just want to let you know that I have really appreciated your beautiful blog and your recipes over the last few years. Thank You!
Did I miss the rising time or is it really this quick? It looks amaaaazing and I am craving the pizza one!!
Super quick – no rise time. 😀
oh god, this looks too yummy. I must try tonight! Thanks!
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I also LOVE Pinterest & have seen so many posts of this pull apart bread! I actually just pinned your recipe to save for later 😉 can’t wait to try it out!
These look DELICIOUS!
The Garlic pull aparts were soooo delicious. I couldn’t even tell they were gf. That is the best kind of recipe! I didn’t have any shredded cheese so I just used the grated kind. Super Yum. I’ll make this for guests (and buy the shredded for looks.) Thanks.
These were SO good! I can’t have dairy either, so I made “pizza” bites with fresh garlic and herbes de provence in the dough, a slice of pepperoni in the center and sprinkled dried oregano on top before baking. Also, I was low on my GF flour blend so I did 1 1/4 cups of that plus 1 cup of Oat Flour (I’m not SUPER sensitive to need certified GF Oat flour). Even my husband was very surprised they were GF! That’s a winner in my book! Can’t wait to try them like a cinnamon roll or a doughnut!
I used Wendy’s flour mix since that’s what we had, made the pizza version which didn’t last long-was asked to make the garlic parm for later in the evening. They were both awesome. Husband couldn’t stop telling me I’d hit the jackpot. Hardest part was to stop eating them. Then we ran out of flour… So now I can’t wait to try it as cinnamon pull a parts — maybe like godfather’s dessert pizza… Thanks Kate!
I was so excited to make this for my Fiance tonight! But it was a disaster – for some reason, my dough was the consistancy of pancake batter. Measured everything twice. Am wondering if the milk should have been 1/2 cup, not a full cup, but ther eis nothing to be done about it now.
Oh no! What GF mix did you use? Sadly they vary a lit in the amount if liquid they can handle. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out for you. 😦
I have been gluten free for 3 years, but was in nursing school and spent very little time in my kitchen. I spent three years wasting 5 or 6 dollars a loaf on crappy bread each week! I cannot believe what I was missing! I have been non stop baking since finding your blog and gf flour mix….my husband and daughter are so happy to have “normal” food again!:) These are in the oven right now….for the 3rd time this month!:):) THANK YOU!
This looks too good to pass up!!!
my bf, who can eat everything, is going to love it when i make this!! it’s really important for me to find GF food which tastes amazing!
I used King Arthur Brand Gluten Free Flour to make these. I too had the pancake batter effect. I added about 3/4 cup more flour and got a thicker but still pancake like batter. I decided to work with what I got and poured the batter in a deep dish pie pan. I wedged pepperoni vertically into the dough all over hoping that they will create pull apart type spaces. They are in the oven now. I’ll update as too how they turn out.
The bread was excellent. I believe I will let the dough proof longer next time I try it and see if I can get away with not adding the extra flour. I loved this recipe and will try again with a different flour mix to see if I can actually make the dough a consistency to roll into balls for the pull apart effect.