Homemade Garlic Knots Recipe (Restaurant-Style)
This homemade garlic knots recipe is an excellent appetizer for any meal. They’re warm, chewy, buttery, soft; and taste amazing pulled apart and dipped in some zesty homemade pizza sauce.
Did you know you can make garlic knots with pizza dough? Whenever I make homemade pizza dough, I love to set some aside to make these knots. They’re great served alongside some NY-style pizza, or even just as a side dish for soups or pasta. The first time I fell in love with them was at a little restaurant near where I grew up. I’ll admit their pizza wasn’t the best, but the knots were five for a dollar and they were to die for. Yes, they were five for a dollar, and no, I don’t know how they made a profit from them. So, these knots are my version of theirs, which I can no longer have because I’ve since moved away. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
What Are Garlic Knots Made Of?
They are typically made of pizza dough that has been cut into strips then knotted and baked until golden brown, then topped with sauteed garlic, herbs, and grated parmesan cheese. These are then dipped into a hot marinara sauce and enjoyed as an appetizer.
Should You Use Store-Bought or Homemade Pizza Dough?
You can use store-bought or homemade pizza dough and sauce. If you’d like to make the dough and sauce yourself, these are the recipes below that I use to make them. The pizza dough can be made fairly quickly in a KitchenAid stand mixer; and the sauce is made simply by adding water, herbs, and spices, to a can of tomato paste. If you wish to make the dough yourself, I suggest making the dough at least a day in advance and leaving it in the fridge overnight; or letting the dough rise in your kitchen, in a covered bowl, until at least doubled in size before shaping into knots and baking. You can make the dough up to three days in advance storing it in the refrigerator, but any longer and I suggest freezing it.
What Do You Eat With Garlic Knots?
They are often served with warm marinara or pizza sauce and enjoyed alongside pizzas, pasta, soups, sandwiches, or even salads. They are a popular appetizer eaten with Italian-style food all across the United States.
How Long Do You Heat Up Garlic Knots?
To heat up leftover garlic knots, these can simply be reheated in a toaster oven at 400°F or 205°C for several minutes until hot again.
Homemade knots should be baked for around ten minutes at 500°F or 260°C, or until golden brown. For baking things like pizza dough and bread, it’s best to use a higher temperature for a shorter time rather than a low temperature for a longer time. This allows the crust to get crispy while leaving the inside of the bread soft and chewy, whereas baking dough at a lower temperature for a longer time risks drying it out.
How Much Does This Recipe Cost To Make?
This recipe is an inexpensive food to make from scratch. If you make everything yourself, at the time of this writing it can cost as little as $1.55 in ingredients to make this recipe depending on where you live. This section is really just to show you how much you can save making food from home compared to getting delivery or takeout, which can be ten times the price.
| Ingredient | Cost |
|---|---|
| Pizza Dough | $.26 per lb for Homemade Pizza Dough $2-5 per lb for storebought |
| Pizza Sauce | $.57 for 3/4 cup of Homemade Pizza Sauce |
| Butter | $.42 for three tablespoons |
| Garlic | $.10 for 4-6 cloves |
| Parmesan | $.14 for two tablespoons |
| Parsley | $.05 of chopped parsley |
| TOTAL | $1.54-6.24 |
At A Minimum, You’ll Need:
A pan like this 10″ nonstick pan to make the garlic butter while the knots bake.
A 13″ x 18″ sheet pan to bake the knots, covered with either parchment paper or a silicone liner like these made by Silpat.
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Not Required, But It’s Nice To Have:
A bench knife to chop the dough into smaller pieces. These are also great for unsticking dough from the counter, scooping up ingredients from the cutting board, or quickly clearing the work area of crumbs, flour, or bits of food that didn’t make it into your pan. This is like the one I use, and it even has a ruler along the edge which is very helpful when cutting things to specific sizes or rolling out dough to a certain thickness.
A garlic press for quickly mincing fresh cloves of garlic. This is the one I use. It’s easy to clean with a quick rinse under the faucet, can fit a few small cloves at a time, and it’s made from durable stainless steel. If you love garlic, you really have to get yourself one of these because once you start using fresh garlic you will never go back to that stuff in a jar.
How To Make Homemade Garlic Knots
You should always start every recipe by gathering your ingredients. This is called “mise en place,” which is a French culinary phrase for having everything in its place and ready for when you start to cook. If you don’t have your ingredients ready, you end up running around the kitchen wild trying to measure or chop ingredients before your recipe burns. If you have everything ready, you can add ingredients as you need them because they’re already prepared.
As in the photo above, gather the pizza dough, butter, garlic, parmesan, and fresh parsley. Then mince the garlic and chop the parsley before getting started.
Leave the pizza dough to sit out in its bag to come to room temperature, for about an hour. It will be easier to work with it this way and create more little air bubbles, helping the knots to be softer.
After the dough has come to room temperature, preheat the oven to 500°F or 260°C.
Dust your work area with some flour so the pizza dough doesn’t stick to your counter, then place the pizza dough and top it with another dusting of flour. Dough dusted with flour won’t stick to your hands and will be easier to knot.
Then, cut the pizza dough into twelve portions. I like to use a bench knife to cut it.
Take each piece of dough, one at a time, and tie them into a knot. You can do this by stretching the dough portion to be about four inches long, then wrapping it around two fingers and pushing one end of the dough through where your fingers are.
You can also watch this step in the video below if it helps you.
Place the dough knots on a lined baking tray like in the above photo, and when the oven is done preheating, bake them at 500°F for about 10 minutes, or until nicely golden brown.
When the dough is dusted with flour and baked, sometimes the dusted flour can obscure the true color of the baking bread. Be wary of this when you check them to see if they’re golden brown, they might be more cooked than they appear. If the flour does this, once you coat them with garlic butter, the pretty golden-brown colors will come out.
Melt the butter in a pan over medium-low heat, then add the garlic and continue to cook until the garlic is nicely cooked; about a minute to two minutes.
Remove the garlic butter from the heat before it browns, as garlic can burn quickly.
Add the garlic butter to the baked bread knots, or vice versa, and toss or stir to coat them nicely with the garlic butter. Coating them with the garlic butter first gives the parmesan something to stick to.
Then sprinkle the parmesan cheese and chopped parsley over the buttered knots, giving them a toss to coat.
Then serve with some marinara or pizza sauce and enjoy!
What’s cooking?
Homemade Garlic Knots Recipe
Makes 3-4 servings.
Ingredients
- 1 lb of store-bought or homemade pizza dough (about 450 grams)
- 3/4 cup of store-bought marinara or homemade pizza sauce for dipping
- 3 Tbsp of butter
- 2 Tbsp parmesan, grated
- 1 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped.
- 3-5 cloves of garlic, minced
- Flour for dusting
Instructions
STEP 1
Leave the dough out in a warm place in your kitchen without removing it from its bag or container and allow it to come to room temperature, this should take about an hour.
STEP 2
Preheat the oven to 500°F or 260°C.
STEP 3
While waiting for the oven to preheat, lightly dust your work surface with flour and remove the dough from its bag or container, placing it on the dusted surface. Top the dough with another dusting of flour, then give it a light rub to spread the flour around. Cut the dough into twelve portions and tie each one into a knot. Place the knots onto a lined 13″ x 18″ sheet pan or cookie tray in three rows of four.
STEP 4
Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown.
STEP 5
While the dough knots are baking, melt the butter in a pan over medium-low heat and add the minced garlic. Cook the garlic, stirring often with a spatula until cooked through; a minute to two minutes. Remove the garlic butter from the heat before it browns.
STEP 6
Add the bread knots to the garlic butter, then give them a stir or toss to coat them. Add the grated parmesan and chopped parsley, then stir or toss to evenly coat. Serve with a side of warmed marinara and enjoy!
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