Watch your breath!

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What happens when a dozen bakers get together to bake on a Sunday through Skype? Well, trust me, you don´t really want to know the details, but there was laughter, girth talk, small talk, linguistic queries (is it penises or penii?) lol ok, I think you get the picture.

Oh you are wondering about who was in that little group? Well, I´m not naming names, but it was Sara, Mary, John, Lisa, Chris, Helene, Kelly and Tanna. This time, Ivonne, Laura, Ben, and Stephanie couldn’t join in the fun, but I´m sure they´ll come back in for the next recipe after that description of what went on.

And regarding the recipe, we did garlic knots. Some did the King Arthur Flour recipe, and some of us did a variation of a Bon Appetit recipe Mary came up with to try to come up with something Lis ate at a restaurant and loved. The dough is a bit sweet with 1/2 cup of sugar, but mine didn´t come out too sweet, so you can adjust that to suit your tastes. I doubled the original amount of garlic, because we are talking about garlic knots here, so they needed to pack a punch.

I loved the brioche-like texture of the bread, not so much the amount of butter brioche-like bread needs, but oh well, you can´t win them all. But beware, if you don´t want to eat them all in a day, do what I did and cook most of them halfway (before they start to brown but they are cooked) and freeze them up to reheat them briefly in the oven later on.

Butterhorn garlic knots (originally from Bon Appetit , later adapted by Mary, and later on, by myself)

Makes 16 big knots

1 cup whole milk
¾ cup unsalted butter cut into pieces
½ cup warm water (105 degrees)
1 tsp plus ½ cup sugar, divided (remember to reduce the sugar a bit if you don´t want them to be a bit sweet)
1 envelope dry yeast
3 large eggs, room temp
5 ¼ cups, AP flour
1 tablespoon salt
1 Tbsp melted butter

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
7 cloves garlic, minced finely

In heavy medium sized sauce pan over low heat, heat milk and ¾ cup of butter until butter melts. Stir occasionally to prevent milk from burning on bottom of pan (I did this step in the microwave at 60% and it worked beautifully). Let cool to 120 degrees.

Combine warm water, 1 tsp sugar, and yeast in small bowl and let stand for 5 minutes (this is for flavor not to proof yeast, unless you are using active yeast in which case you are proofing and getting flavor)

In large bowl of stand mixer using the whisk attachment, beat eggs and remaining sugar at low speed until blended. Beat in milk mixture. Gradually add 2 ½ cups of the flour, ½ cup at a time until blended smooth. Replace the whisk with dough hook. Add yeast mixture, salt, and 2 cups of flour (½ cup at a time), beat at medium low speed (2 on the KA mixture). You will have very wet and loose dough that climbs the dough hook but falls back down the bowl by this time. One TBSP at a time, add enough flour to form a firm but sticky dough ball. The dough balls will pull away from the sides of the bowl and not flop back to the sides. It will feel like “fly paper” when you tough it.

Pour 1 Tbsp melted butter in large bowl (4Qt or Larger) that can be fitted with a lid or that plastic wrap clings to well. On very lightly flour covered counter and with lightly floured hands, give dough 3 – 5 quick hand kneads to form good dough ball and then put in buttered bowl, turning dough over to coat with butter. Cover bowl with lid or plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft free place (your hot water heater Lisa, covered with a towel) until doubled, about 1 ½ hours.

Punch down dough, fold dough over in half and then half again, and brush with melted butter. Cover bowl again and let rise again in same warm draft free place until double (about 1 hour) FYI: This is called turning the dough too, just like with puff pastry and will result in a flaky rolls)

From here follow the directions for making the knots as shown on the KA website. Just don’t tuck the ends in to get the shape you want.

Cover and let rise until double, brush with melted butter and garlic and bake in 375 F degree preheated oven for 15 -20 minutes. If you notice your oven is baking too hot, turn it down to 350 and bake a little longer. If the tops are starting to brown too much owing to all the butter, just cover with some foil but take the foil off for the last few minutes of baking so you don’t make the rolls soggy.

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Filed under bread, food, savory