One of my first and favourite recipe on the blogs is Garlic Dough Balls with Herbed Butter. Keeping the recipe similar with just mild alterations, gave life to these beautiful Garlic Knots!
Whether you love your Italian Food with fresh breads, or just soup is being made at home. These garlic knots are WHAT YOU NEED to make your dinner from good to WOW! Let’s read more about it and learn to make these knots in under 2 hours.
Lean Loaf
In the world of breads, you will go through words like lean and rich. Now essentially, the difference between these type of breads is its ingredients. If we talk about lean dough per say, it mostly includes, water, yeast, salt and flour.
On the contrary, rich doughs have a lot going in including a lot of fat content and dairy products like eggs and milk. A heavy dough – it needs time to breathe and proof.
Lean loaves however, are healthier breads as there is hardly any fat involved. The bread is flavoured with some salt and is usually and accompaniment bread.
Working with Yeast
YEAST is nothing to be scared about, it’s honestly not Rocket Science. I use Active Dry Instant Yeast. If you’re using Fresh Yeast, just double the quantity. Here are a few tips which will help you to learn about yeast. I use Active Dry Instant Yeast.
Water: Only use Warm Water when trying to activate yeast. Both hot and cold water will kill the yeast. Use Lukewarm Water!
Salt vs Sugar: Sugar helps the yeast to activate, to make it frothy and to give a better rise. Whilst, salt is the opposite, it’s an anti-agent. Salt should only be incorporated in the dough towards the final stages of it
Proofing: YES IT REQUIRES PATIENCE! You need to find a warm place, a Switched Off oven is the best place to proof your bread. In areas where it’s generally cold or during Winters, it will take longer to proof say about a little bit more than an hour. But during Warm Climate or/and Humid Weather, it will take relatively shorter, close to around 40 minutes.
Enough about yeast! All I am saying is it’s nothing to be scared about. If you want to learn more about the rising agent, click here to take you to Yeast 101.
@boy.eatsworld x lean breads
I know it doesn’t show on this blog enough BUT I do try to stay healthy and I love me some Italian Crusty Breads. The recipe and the ingredients remain somewhat similar, only a few elements are added, or there would be a change in method. Here are the links to similar breads which are the on the blog, which you will LOVE!
1. superseed mini bagels
2. multigrain bread loaf
3. garlic dough balls with herbed butter
Dividing & Shaping the Knots
Once your initial dough is formed, divide it into 8 equal pieces to shape and proof. To get equal sized knots, it’s recommended to use a measuring scale which can be found frugally on Amazon.
After dividing your dough, it is important to shape them. To do the same, follow the instructions written below:
1. Take 1 piece out of the divided 8. Using your palms, elongate this dough piece to a thin and long snake like structure.
2. Once long, curve both the ends using your hands to form a U like shape.
3. Next, cross that U to one another but ensure the gap remains there. The U would become an abnormal O with the small gap and loose ends.
4. Once done, take the longer side and tuck it in to the O gap, pulling it in, and thus forming a knot.
5. Repeat these steps for all remaining 7 garlic knots.
The Flour Used
The Flour Used:
This bread was made using TwF Flour, Flour 8714 (Series C). This flour has a nutty profile supporting 75% hydration. It’s a blend of different wheat varities, soy flour and bengal gram and works excellent as a bread flour. These bagels turned out softer because of it.
Here’s the link to it : https://twfflours.com/c?source=boyeatsworld
Let’s bread it up now!
Equipment
- Stand Mixer (Optional)
- oven
- Baking Tray
- Weighing Scale
- Pizza Cutter / Dough Cutter
Ingredients
For the Dough
- 220 g TwF Flour 8714 Bread Flour alternatively All Purpose Flour
- 160 ml Water lukewarm
- 4 g Active Dry Yeast
- 1 tsp Caster Sugar
- 30 g Salted Butter
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1 tsp Oregano Powder
- ½ tsp Red Chilli Flakes
For the Herbed Butter
- 30 g Butter
- Chopped Parsley to taste
- 2 tbsp Garlic minced,paste or pressed
- 1 tsp Salt
Instructions
For the Bread
- Take a bowl, mix together - yeast, sugar and water. Whisk together and let it rest to froth. It will take about 3-5 minutes to froth well. You’ll see bubbles appearing.
- Take a stand mixer or just a clean surface. Add your flour, garlic powder, oregano an red chilli flakes, and mix together. If you’re using a plain surface, make a well between the dry ingredients to add the Yeast Mixture.
- Add in your Yeast mixture and start kneading. When it just starts coming together, add Salted Butter (either soft or melted) and your salt. Knead well and roll it into a tight ball.
- To shape the knots. Elongate one of the dough balls to a snake like shape. Once long, curve both the ends together till the form a U and then cross them together. Take one end of the crossed U and tuck it in between the small gap of the U and form that knot. (read more about it, above)
- Keep them on a well oiled tray for proofing. Make sure they are not next to each other and have some gap in between. They will double in size , so plan the tray size accordingly.
- Here to speed up the process a bit, you may cling wrap your tray or even add a Muslin Cloth on top of it. For proofing, keep your tray inside a Switched OFF oven and let it proof for an hour. (again depending upon where you are and your weather)
- Preheat your oven before you start baking them.Once doubled in size, bake them at 160° for 15 -20 minutes or until done. Moreover, if you think that the top part of the bread is browning too fast and inside is not done yet, feel free to cover it with an aluminium foil.
For the Herbed Butter
- Take a very small pan, add a lot of butter here. Keep it in a low to medium heat setting here.
- After the butter has somewhat melted, add the garlic and mix well.
- Add shredded fresh parsley and salt, mix well and serve alongside the fresh bread!
Someone once rightly said “a recipe has no soul, you must bring soul to the recipe”, so here I am, trying to bring my passion for food into easy to make recipes from around the world.
My name is Sohail Nath and I welcome you to my happy place, @boy.eatsworld.
This blog, my creativity’s nest covers travel inspirations, authentic yet homemade recipe and food blogs.