The Kidlet wanted to make the monkey bread recipe out of her cookbook today. It calls for 1 lb. of pizza dough. I have an excellent pizza dough recipe. It makes ~3 lbs. of dough. I thought about scaling back the recipe but, after discussing it with TF, I opted to make a regular-sized batch of pizza dough and then just look for something to do with the remainder. Normally pizza would be a no-brainer. But we don't have any mozzarella on hand right now. And with COVID-19 keeping everybody at home, I can't easily run out and get some. So I asked the Internet for other ideas on what to do with my leftover pizza dough.

Most of the recipes I came across were just variants on pizza: pizza with unusual toppings, stuffed pizza, deep-dish pizza, calzones, pizza bites, pizza skewers, pizza pinwheels, etc. Even when I specifically looked at pages that claimed to have compiled lists of non-pizza recipes, they were still basically just pizza with different topology.

I did manage to turn up a few recipes that were actually not pizza. Sadly, I didn't have the ingredients for a lot of them. Many still required mozzarella. Others were after meatballs or sandwich meats. And a few required sour cream, cottage cheese, or cream cheese. This left me with only a handful of recipes. The scrambled egg pockets and the "quichzza" didn't really appeal and I was NOT prepared to make a kilo of pizza dough crackers. So that left me with pretzel bites (a strong contender), Cheddar-onion focaccia (which got TF very excited), and garlic knots (which got an extremely enthusiastic vote from the Kidlet).

I've made garlic knots before, but I've never really been impressed with the flavour. The garlic never has enough presence. These ones seemed like they had a lot of promise though. Rather than brushing them with garlic butter before and/or after baking, you drown them in an herby garlic butter mixture. It's not just brushed on, they're swimming in it. Now that sounds more like it!

Garlic Knots

Slightly adapted from Foodie Crush

Ingredients

• ~1kg Pizza dough
• 1/2 c. salted butter¹
• 1/2 c. olive oil
• 10 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tsp. dried oregano
• 1/4 c. chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1/4 c. grated Parmesan

Directions

1. Prepare the pizza dough as directed and let it complete its first two rises.
2. Press the dough into a large flat rectangle and cut thin strips/ropes off of it.
3. Tie each dough rope into a knot and place on a greased baking sheet.
4. Cover and set aside to proof for 30-45 minutes.
5. Bake at 220°C (425°F) for 10 minutes. Lower temperature to 180°C (350°F) and bake for another 5 minutes. (If you made smaller knots then you may not need the last five minutes.)
6. Meanwhile, heat the butter and oil over medium heat.
7. Stir in the garlic, oregano, and parsley and cook for 30 seconds. Do not allow garlic to cook or brown. You want it hot but not really cooked. Set aside.
8. Transfer rolls to a large serving platter and sprinkle with Parmesan. If you used unsalted butter, sprinkle the rolls with a little salt at this point too.
9. Pour the garlic butter mixture over the rolls and serve.

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¹ If you don't have any salted butter on hand, use unsalted and sprinkle the rolls with a bit of flaky or coarse salt when they first come out of the oven. I think I used ~2 tsp. of coarse sea salt. ^Back