Homemade Pizza and Garlic Knots

The other day I asked kids what they wanted to make, Boo Boo said pizza, Buddy said garlic bread.  Most of the time I use frozen pizza dough balls from Sam’s Club that we buy in bulk for pizza.  The thing with those is that I have to plan ahead to get the dough out of the freezer to allow it to defrost and rise – that is usually an all day process.  Recently I had found and made a recipe for garlic knots.  The dough is pretty easy and really quick for a yeast dough so I thought lets use that and make a double batch to have enough to make both Homemade Pizza and Garlic Knots!

The recipe comes from The Recipe Critic website and can be found here.  I make the dough exactly as her recipe says but I changed the garlic spread slightly.

Dough Recipe

• 1½ cups warm water
• 2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1 Tbsp. yeast
• 3½ cups flour
• 1 tsp Salt

Instructions

• First we started with the dough recipe – as we were making a pizza and garlic knots I doubled the recipe.  
• Put the yeast, warm water, and sugar in the bowl of the stand mixer and let the yeast activate and get bubbly – roughly 5 minutes.  
• Once the yeast was activated we added the salt and flour and mixed until the dough had formed a ball and was not sticking to the bowl anymore.  
• After we had a dough ball I took the dough out – sprayed the bowl with cooking spray and placed it back in to rise on the pellet stove.  
• This recipe only calls for letting the dough rise 10 minutes so it is perfect to use when you are pinched for time.

• After the dough had risen I cut the ball in half and preheat the oven to 450º on the convection setting (I find this gives a crisper crust more like brick oven).  I returned the half for the garlic knots to the pellet stove and rolled the pizza dough out into a circle.
• I sprayed the pizza pan with olive oil cooking spray to help ensure the pizza wouldn’t stick.

• Once the pan was greased I moved the dough on and then the fun starts!  Boo Boo loves to put on the sauce.

• After sauce I lightly sprinkle the pizza with garlic powder and pizza seasoning.  Next the kids add the cheese and whatever toppings we pick – this time it was turkey pepperoni and turkey bacon.
• Once the toppings are complete we popped the pizza into the preheated oven for roughly 18 minutes.

Garlic Knot Instructions

• While the pizza was cooking we started on the garlic knots.  I retrieved the dough and rolled it out.  After rolling I cut it into pieces with a pizza cutter.
• Once the dough is in strips I roll it into a long rope.
• Next I fold it over and roll it together.
• Finally I tie it in a knot.

• Repeat for all of the dough.  Turn the oven down to 400º after the pizza finishes and bake 15-20 minutes.

While the knots are baking making the garlic spread.

Garlic Spread Recipe

I basically reduced by half – they were amazing as the recipe stated but I thought that they would still be good with a little less butter – I was right 🙂

• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 Tablespoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon parsley
• drizzle of Extra Virgin Olive oil

While the knots finish baking – brush them with the garlic spread.

This was a pretty easy lunch to make and definitely so yummy!  If you like pizza or garlic knots I would recommend you try this easy recipe. Enjoy – I know we did!