Welcome to the blog for Colgate University's interdisciplinary course on food. This is the place to keep up with what students in the course are experiencing in their work at Common Thread Community Farm and through their everyday encounters with food.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Your Very Own GARLIC KNOTS

Over break, I had some time on my hands, and was thinking about garlic knots. They are so amazingly delicious, and things that are that good I just assume are impossible to make at home. But I decided to try anyway, and they turned out amazing! So I wanted to write a post about it to show everyone that it is indeed possible.

I found a good recipe online at simplyrecipes.com and got to work.

What you'll need: (Borrowed from Simplyrecipes.com)
Dough:
  • 3/4 cup warm water (105°F-115°F)
  • 1 package (2 teaspoons) of active dry yeast (check the expiration date on the package)
  • 1 3/4 cups bread flour (can use all-purpose but bread flour will give you a crisper crust)
  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • Coating:
  • 5 Tbsp unsalted butter
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/4 cup parsley, minced
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup parmesan (my addition)

First mix together the warm water and yeast with a little sugar or honey (to feed the yeast). You are good to go if it forms a foam in a few minutes. If nothing changes, your yeast is a dud. 

Next, mix together the flour, salt, and sugar in in a big bowl. Then pour in the yeast water and the olive oil. Mix it all together with a spoon or your hands. It should start to come together and look something like this:


At this point you can mush this all together with your hands until it forms a ball. If it isn't coming together into a ball because its too dry, add A LITTLE water and try again. If it just wont stop completely sticking to your hands, then add some flour. Work it like this until you have a slightly tacky ball of dough like this:

Once you have your dough ball, knead it for 5-10 minutes. The dough should be a bit more smooth and elastic than when you started. Form it into a nice ball, lightly coat in olive oil, and put in a bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. 


Let it sit in a warm place until it has roughly doubled in size. This could take an hour, or several, depending on how warm your house or kitchen is. I put my bowl on the heat vent to try and speed things up.



Once your dough has risen, take it out and roll it into a flat rectangle about 5 inches wide (this might be more manageable if you do this step with half or a quarter of the dough at a time). 
You also probably want to preheat your oven at this point to 400º.
I deviated from the recipe here and covered the flattened dough with the minced garlic and oil so that the garlic would bake with the bread. It was a good choice. 

Cut that rectangle into roughly 5"x1" strips and fold them into overhand (pretzel) knots and put them on a baking sheet. You can oil the sheet if your knots aren't that oily. 


Once your knots are all tied and your oven is hot, bake them for 15-20 minutes. The recipe called for another hour of rising before this step, but I skipped it and it worked out fine. 

While your knots are in the oven, melt your butter in a small saucepan. If you chose not to put your garlic on the knots before baking, you want to simmer them in the melted butter now, but DO NOT OVER COOK THE GARLIC, or else you will ruin the "garlic" part of garlic knots. Add the parsley and salt and turn off heat.

When the knots are lightly browned on top, take them out and put them in a large bowl. Cover them with the butter, parsley, salt, and parmesan, and mix it all together. Then enjoy your very own garlic knots.
(I didn't have parsley, but  wish I had)


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