These addicting, oregano-flecked garlic knots are made with pizza dough for a finger licking good snack, appetizer, or sauce sopper-upper at any meal.
We love making our homemade pizza. In the summertime we make pizza on the grill. In the fall we make pesto pizza with balsamic chicken and peaches. And come winter a sheet pan pizza with BBQ chicken and blue cheese is a party just waiting to happen.
Sometimes after making individual pizzas we may even have leftover pizza dough looking for a home.
“Hmmm,” me thinks. What to do with leftover pizza dough? Jackpot! It’s only the perfect opportunity to make killer garlic knots instead of garlic bread for dinner.
But when they’re so easy to make, why wait for leftover dough? Whipping up this super easy, 3-step batch of homemade pizza dough to use for soft garlic knots, pizzas, and any other recipe that calls for a delicious crust, has never been easier to do.
Killer Garlic Knots Recipe
In our former life living in Venice Beach, Calif., one of our go-to spots when friends came to visit was dinner a few blocks from our house at Marina Del Rey’s C&O Trattoria. It’s a solid neighborhood spot just steps from Venice Beach that hosts self-serve Chianti in casks hung on the wall and huge—I mean HUGE—portions of pasta, salads, and apps. It’s a busy place. Cheap food, cheap wine. And good fun.
To appease the patrons strewn up and down the sidewalk anxiously awaiting their name to be called for a seat, C&O serves their killer garlic rolls to anyone within arm’s reach of a waiter jostling through the crowd with a platter piled high. *Disclosure: My Alaskan Malamute may have ‘accidentally’ snarfed a Killer Garlic Roll from a dangling hand on our nightly walk to the beach. Apologies were accepted. And she had killer breath afterward.
I don’t live at the beach anymore, but I still crave those killer garlic knots, so now I make them at home with 3-step DeLallo’s pizza dough kit, so they’re easier to bake than ever.
Ingredients for Garlic Knots
I’ve made homemade pizza dough for years, but it’s never been easier than when using DeLallo’s Italian pizza dough kit for these killer garlic rolls. Here’s what garlic knots are made of:
- DeLallo Italian pizza dough kit
- extra virgin olive oil
- butter
- garlic
- oregano
- flaky sea salt
- Parmesan cheese (optional)
Use Pizza Dough for These Pizza Knots
Everything you need for making perfect pizza dough is included in DeLallo’s Italian pizza dough kit. What makes it so perfect? Ease for one thing. And for another, DeLallo sources their flours from Italy and like the authentic pizzas you’ll eat there, this kit uses type 00 sourdough flour.
Why use 00 flour for pizza? 00 flour is finely ground with a lower gluten content than most flours, creating a dough that’s easy to work with, tastes tender, and has the perfect chew when baked.
The kit makes four 10-inch thin-crust pizzas, or about 32 pizza knots that go down fast.
To make the dough, simply add water to the provided flour mix and yeast packet, and stir with a fork. The 00 flour requires less water than a regular flour would, because it is ground more fine.
The dough comes together easily with each swipe of the fork, and after a few minutes of kneading by hand is formed into a smooth, round ball. The dough is then set aside to rest and rise for 45 minutes. Once the dough has risen, start forming your knots, or at this stage of the game, cover and refrigerate the dough to use within 1-3 days.
How to Tie Garlic Knots
Divide the dough into 6 sections, covering the unused dough with a dishcloth or plastic wrap so it doesn’t dry out.
Using lightly floured hands on a lightly floured surface, gently stretch out the pizza dough and roll into 4″-5″ X 1/2″ lengths. Twist the dough into a knot tucking the ends under the knot, into a ball about the size of a ping pong ball.
Place the knot on baking sheet lined with parchment paper or sprayed with canola oil. Set in a warm spot, lightly covered, to rise for 20 minutes.
The knots will take about 15 minutes to bake into perfect and tender puffs of pizza dough. Sprinkle with flakes of sea salt while the knots are still hot for added flavor.
While the knots are baking in the oven, prepare their garlic bath.
Give These Rolls a Garlic Butter Bath
Naturally, you don’t want to burn your pizza dough rolls in the oven, but even more, you don’t want bitter garlic that’ll turn these garlic rolls from addictive to resistive.
Using a combination of butter and olive oil creates a garlic sauce that won’t solidify as it cools like butter would on its own. And if you were to only use olive oil, you’d be missing out on the flavor butter provides. So using both tastes best in my book.
The Garlic Flavor Infusion
In this preparation we don’t cook the garlic. Instead, we steep it to flavor the oil butter combo. Add the minced garlic and herbs to the hot butter and oil, leave on the heat to cook for 30 seconds or just until fragrant, then remove from the heat and let the flavor infusion begin while the oil and butter bubbles settle down.
Like the original rolls at C&O, I add dry oregano to this mix. You could instead try:
- Italian seasoning
- rosemary
- basil
- marjoram
- parsley
- Or, skip the herbs if you prefer.
Toss the rolls in the garlic/oil/butter/herb bath while still warm, then add a few more flakes of flaky sea salt.
Serve these bitesize baby garlic bombs right from the pan or transfer to a serving dish. They’re surprisingly good at room temperature, too.
And if you feel like going for extra credit, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese for even more delicious bites.
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