Garlic knots

I got this garlic knot recipe from an extremely popular US recipe site called Simply Recipes.. Its a ridiculously easy little recipe, if a little time consuming due to the rolling out and rising parts. I've made these garlic knots about eight or nine times now, at the time of writing, and they cause silence in rooms. That or my coworkers seek me out to specifically tell me how good these are, on the third or fourth time I made this, some of the other nurses were interrupting handover to tell me how good they were.

I even gave some to Mama Pham and VGirl who told me that it was good, my Sixth Auntie also had some and she shyly asked for another one, so I know they are damn good.

The method is relatively easy, the only thing is that there are lots of little things you need to remember to watch out for with this recipe. Other than that, its just a bit time consuming as there is just a wee bit of waiting around for the dough to rise. At my slowest, I can crack out a batch in just under two hours on a cold (3-7C) winter night. When I first started making this in summer? Took me an hour in 30C, heat and humidity really affect this dough.

With making the knot part of the garlic knot, roll the worm sized blob of dough in some flour so that it doesn't stick to itself. Once you tie the knot, if its unfloured on all sides, it will eventually turn itself back into a weird blob shape once it rises again. The extra flour stops it from sticking and keeps its nice shape when baked.

If your dough isn't rising due to cold weather, briefly heat your oven up to a low temperature say 100C, for a few minutes until the oven gets warm. Then turn off the heat immediately and shove in your dough in a mixing bowl, and allow it to proof there. The top and sides might begin to cook a little bit if the oven is too hot, scrape it off if it happens and continue with the rest of the recipe.

Garlic knots

Ingredients:

For the knots:
2 cups of strong 00 flour
2 teaspoons of active yeast or a 7g packet of yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1 tablespoon of olive oil


For the garlic butter
1/4 cup of finely chopped curly leaf parsley
3-4 cloves of finely minced garlic
100g of butter
1 teaspoon of salt

Almost expired parsley woo!

1. Heat up some water, it should be warm around 38-40C. Make it the same heat as you would for a baby bottle. Dump the yeast in and let it bubble away!

Bubble, toil and trouble!

2. Dump all the rest of the bread ingredients into a steel mixing bowl and wait until the yeast is ready.

Add caption

3. Its ready when it should smell like a bakery, very yeasty and beery. It should be cloudier than it is clear and full of little bubbles. Dump it all into the mixing bowl

Ooh yes

4. Either knead it/turn on your dough hook appliance until a smooth dough is formed and starts pulling away from the edges. Should take about 4-8 minutes in your dough mixer. By hand? Who knows! Maybe 8-20 minutes? Add more flour as required if it still continues to feel wet.

In it goes!

This was my Christmas present from VGirl!

5. Cover the top with some plastic wrap and place somewhere warm for however long it takes to double in size. The least amount of time it took me was 20 minutes, the longest? Almost 40.

This one is a bit floury

6. Give it a another brief knead and dust your favourite board with some flour. I didn't do it in this first batch, but the later batches did.

Something like this!

7. Pretending we have a floured board, pinch off a 50 cent sized piece of dough, or a 5cm rough blob.

Like so!

8. Give it a roll in the pretend floured board, once it gets to about 10-15cm or about the thickness of your finger stop!

Voile! A worm!

9. Make yourself a simple slip knot, over, under and through! The flour will help it not stick to itself. Don't squish it too hard or it will stop being so pretty. You should be able to give the dough a bit of a stretch if required to make the knot complete.

One!

Two!

Three!

10. Put them on a tray, brush with a little melted butter and allow to rise for another 10+ minutes until they puff up to twice their size. Meanwhile preheat your oven to 180C

So fat

Even fatter!

My second batch!

11. Bake in your preheated oven for 12-15 minutes, or lightly golden brown.

The blobby ones were made without flour coating the knots

For the butter.
1. Mince your garlic and parsley.
2. Melt your butter in a pot over a low heat.

Delicious!

3. Throw in the garlic once the butter has melted and allow it to cook off in a low heat for 2-3 minutes or until the garlic is fragrant.
4. Toss in your parsley and salt, and try a little bit.

Mmm garlic and parsley

5. If you're civilized and don't want to kill yourself with butter, paint on the garlic butter onto the garlic knots. If you don't care, do what I do and throw it in the same bowl as the garlic knots and toss to mix. The best bit is scraping more bits of garlic butter onto your roll.

Serve warm! Eat immediately! Also good the next day, but best right now!

I got contacted about promoting the James Street Food and Wine Trail, currently in its 3rd year and running from the 31st of July to the 3rd of August. Read the media release below and if you're keen I'll see you there! I'll keep updating this and posting it to the bottom of my posts until the day of the event :)