It’s a lazy labor day Monday here in Maine and I’m coming down from an important weekend. It was my 31st birthday, which felt mostly like a fever dream, because I woke up Friday with a bad cold. I had the perfect recipe in mind, which I started Thursday. The first day of my vacation from work. And after many trials and tribulations, tissues, and sunny walks I’m feeling better. And I’m enjoying parmesan garlic knots. 

Parmesan Garlic Knots

Where do I begin? I was feeling on top of the world Wednesday. It was a slower day at work with pleasant customers and tasks to keep me busy. I walked down the hill and bought Filipino food for lunch, which my coworker had raved about all summer. I tried the pork and beef empanadas, a unique bao-type thing stuffed with boiled eggs and meat, and a sweet sticky rice dessert wrapped in a banana leaf. My coworkers wished me a very happy birthday and my manager even slipped me a birthday card on my way out. Leaving felt a little sad.

But I was on a high and looked forward to the Thursday farmers market. As we creep closer to the end of the season, as leaves begin to change colors and the garden stops blooming, I am realizing how fleeting my favorite weekly adventure is. It was raining this time, so I donned my jacket and boots and headed downtown. There was barely anybody at the market, to my surprise and delight. The grass was slick and several of the vendors were absent. I stopped for a good minute or two to pet one of the golden retrievers at the entrance. Something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. Her big brown eyes pierced right through me.

The Beginning of Fall

I noticed a new sign for a new coffee shop plastered over the old laundromat building and started thinking of my cafe. Sometimes I can’t believe that I got up so early, drove so far, and made so much food. I think part of my stubbornness manifests as reckless optimism sometimes. I had to convince myself I could do it. But I’m glad now that my life is much more balanced and free. All of my cooking and baking can be reserved for just me. The row of parking spots that is usually filled at the market was completely empty. So I walked back to my car, put on some rainy day music, and headed to the farm stand. 

They had pumpkins outside arranged in a beautiful cornucopia. I exchanged excitement with the woman working, in disbelief that fall had arrived so soon. I took my time, perusing the late summer array, and bought parsley. Along with 6 bulbs of garlic. Not cloves – bulbs. I was not making a necklace to keep vampires away, but prepping for my parmesan garlic knots. I had watched a video of a chef making giant garlic knots stuffed with roasted garlic butter and couldn’t get them out of my head. It would be perfect for my birthday. And silly me – I thought the recipe would be easy, too. 

Garlic Knot Memories

Parmesan garlic knots are very dear to me. I’ve mentioned our favorite restaurant many times before, but my parents have been dining at a certain Italian restaurant since the day I was born. My father and grandmother actually dined there for the first time after my mom gave birth to me, while she (and I) were relaxing in the hospital. We’ve been hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, especially because it’s located in the town where I went to college. It became even more special in my adulthood when it was the only place I would get to see my family and catch up on life. Long story short, they have delicious parmesan garlic knots. So beloved that the servers wear t-shirts with “got knots?” on the back. 

We usually fight over them and have 3 or 4 each because they’re so small. The basket pools with heavenly garlic butter, thickened with grated parmesan. The last person gets to sop it all up. I didn’t feel like going to out for my birthday. And my mom had a long work day. It would have been a 40 minute drive. So I decided to make my own parmesan garlic knots at home. For the first time, surprisingly. I wanted to make them gigantic so we could each have our own. Stuffed with garlic butter and baked in a muffin tin. I dreamed of a dramatic dome of dough spilling over the tops, which would caramelize and bubble in the oven. 

Vacation Cooking

The video I watched also showed the chefs rolling the baked knots in garlic butter, then parmesan and parsley. Almost like you would roll a donut in cinnamon sugar. And they served them with homemade marinara sauce. Because I had the whole week off, I decided not to rush. So I spent Thursday nursing my sourdough starter back to life from the fridge and cooking tomato sauce. I spent a few good minutes chopping onions with my beloved Japanese knife and many more minutes peeling garlic cloves. I had a mountain of them, so I decided to just keep the skins on 3/4 of them and cook them in olive oil. 

On my last day of work before vacation I treated myself to several gifts. I had set aside money for it anyway, and it was inevitable, being a chef that works in a kitchen store. I bought a glass bottle for olive oil. Green with a gold pour spout. A new kitchen scale. And a few other things. Fancy vanilla. And I refilled my olive oil. So I poured a glug into my dutch oven and stirred my onions and diced garlic on low heat. Filling the house with that distinctive Italian restaurant scent. My fingertips were stained with pungent garlic, so I washed them several times. I washed tomatoes, too, a gift from my aunt’s garden. I plucked some basil leaves from my own. 

Birthday Blues

After a couple hours I had settled into my vacation. Comfy clothes, a new audiobook, and a fragrant tomato sauce reducing slowly. My sourdough starter was starting to come back to life. And before I knew it, the day was over. I made pizza for dinner and stayed up too late playing my new video game, Blue Prince. A mind-boggling puzzle game set in an inherited mansion. Relaxation washed over me like a blanket, and I drifted off to sleep some time after midnight. When I opened my eyes on Friday, my birthday, my throat felt a little raw. Nothing to worry about. Probably from scream-singing in my car on the way home on Wednesday. 

I took a long, warm shower and put on a brand new shirt. And I hurried to the living room to meet my dad. We were going out to breakfast. So I grabbed my phone and realized after a sneezing fit that I didn’t feel well. My nose wouldn’t stop running. The drive to the restaurant felt like an eternity. Finally, when we got there, we waited for about 15 minutes to get a table, in the cold late-summer air on a cozy patio in the morning breeze. We had a great breakfast and my dad told me how proud of me he is. How much I’ve changed and grown. But my mind wandered to the pile of napkins I had used as tissues. 

Confit Garlic

We drove home and I spent the rest of my birthday fighting with my body. Willing my cold to go away. I didn’t have any appetite for lunch, so I ate leftover homemade sushi and chips. I tried to relax and not think about my blog, or the custom paintings I had put off for a few days, but I felt anxious and exhausted. To appease my hungry perfectionism monster, I fed my sourdough starter and made a beautiful hydrated dough. Similar to my beloved focaccia, with rye flour and perfectly measured ratios (thanks to my new digital scale). I dreamed of a stretchy, glutinous crumb in my parmesan garlic knots and knew focaccia would be a great base. I spent about an hour, too, peeling the rest of my garlic cloves, covered in olive oil. 

The last thing I did was prep my garlic butter for the next day and tuck my dough in the fridge for the night. Satisfied that I had accomplished something. It felt weird to not be at work, and I wondered if that was why my body felt in disarray. Then we got an emergency alert that the mall downtown had a propane leak and was a “catastrophic danger”. So I urged my mom to come home early just in case. We didn’t get to walk, which did not help my mental health. Or my appetite. We ate my favorite sandwiches for dinner, which I still couldn’t really enjoy. And I force-fed myself tiramisu from an Italian bakery, which was mediocre at best. We tried to relax and watch some mindless TV after dinner, but my cold got worse and worse. 

Recipe Testing + Goulash

So it was not a great birthday. And Saturday was a continuation of things not going my way. My focaccia-esque recipe failed to proof properly in the muffin tins and ended up incredibly dense and hard. I wasted all that confit garlic butter. My cold worsened and I spent most of the day sniffling and napping and going from too hot to too cold. In my fever I started to dream of work. My easy days at the cooking store talking to people and getting nerdy about cooking. And even though I looked forward to my vacation, I just wanted time to pass quicker. Stubbornly I decided to make another batch of garlic knots with my pizza recipe as a base. I let it proof overnight in the fridge and whipped up a simple garlic butter. 

Things started to improve Sunday. We ate my favorite goulash for dinner, and my failed pucks of garlic knots actually tasted pretty great. So I felt determined to see my vision come to life. I added a little extra yeast this time, hoping to get those dramatic domes. Thankfully I slept like a baby on Monday morning. And my cold was starting to dissipate. I even managed to take the most beautiful breezy walk in the sun. When I got home I checked on my parmesan garlic knots, which were puffy and proofed in the muffin tin. Already beginning to dome over. So I excitedly grabbed my camera and preheated the oven. 

Stubborn Perseverance

The house filled with an intoxicating garlic butter and fresh bread scent as they cooked. Admittedly, I used too high of a heat, but it created a delightful contrast between crisp, pizza-dough-like tops with chewy, soft interiors. The garlic butter had coated each twist and turn of the knots and brown butter pooled in the muffin compartments like liquid gold. I poured it all into a bowl and added olive oil. In another, I mixed grated parmesan and chopped parsley. And I rolled my parmesan garlic knots first in the liquid, then in the cheesy coating. My marinara from days prior was ready in the fridge and I spooned some onto my plate. I plucked a piece of basil from my garden for garnish. And I felt overjoyed. 

The knots were not perfect. But I’ve adjusted the recipe to get them there. I settled for great, not perfect, after the weekend I had. And here I am, on Monday, hours before my blog is due. No painting, no edited photos, and bones of a recipe. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I took the week off, especially for my birthday, but I’m stubborn. Just like my mom, who has racked up many 200 day-streaks of walking 10,000+ steps, interrupted by her mandatory knee injections. Ordered to stay off her feet for a day. I told her I couldn’t believe I had over 150 blog posts now, and how much joy it still brings me. The millions of words, hundreds of pictures, and 152 recipes didn’t feel like work. 

Garlic Butter + Parmesan

So I knew I couldn’t end my streak. I persisted and edited my photos before lunch. Finalized my recipe. And wrote this post. All while watching tennis, eating snacks with renewed flavor and freshness, and chewing on fluffy and crunchy garlic knots. Which, by the way, are delicious. I will proof them a little more next time, and I added more bread flour to the recipe to make them softer. A little milk, too, in place of water. But the garlic butter was delicious and salty, buttery, and filled with garlic. The marinara sauce tasted so fresh and sweet and paired so well with the bread. It’s fun to pull apart the twisted and knotted layers of the garlic knots, too, which are lathered in parsley-flecked butter and jewels of sea salt. 

I’m grateful now to smell garlic knots baking and to taste freshly torn basil from the garden. Yes this sounds histrionic, especially since I’m feeling much better now. It was just a cold. But I’m reminding myself to be grateful for the little things. Another note to self – cooking is supposed to be fun, not stressful. You don’t need to be perfect. Neither does your birthday. I’m looking forward to returning to work Wednesday with a clear head and a well-rested body. Fall is coming, fast, so I’ll be making plans with some apples and pumpkins and cinnamon. May this year be filled with good food, great people, and no colds. Orange leaves and warm drinks, breezy walks and good TV. 

Thank you for reading! Be sure to check out my Etsy shop for 100’s of recipe cards and art prints. Use code THEFORKEDRING for 25% off. See you next time!

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Parmesan Garlic Knots

A yeast-risen bread dough filled with garlic butter and rolled in cheese

Course Side Dish

Cuisine American, Italian

Keyword bread, garlic

Prep Time 1 day day 3 hours hours

Cook Time 20 minutes minutes

Servings 6

Author theforkedring

Ingredients

• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1/3 cup + 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 cup warm water
• 1/2 cup warm whole milk
• 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter softened
• 12 cloves garlic peeled + chopped
• 1/3 cup fresh chopped parsley
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan

Instructions

• Combine bread flour, yeast, and kosher salt in a large bowl.
• Add 2 tbsp olive oil, warm water, and warm milk. Work into a shaggy dough with a chopstick and then transfer onto a clean work surface.
• Knead for 5-10 minutes until cohesive and elastic. Transfer to a lightly-greased bow, covered, and allow to rest at room temperature for 12-24 hours (at least overnight).
• The next day, remove your dough and spread it into a flat rectangle on a floured work surface.
• In a separate bowl, combine softened butter with chopped garlic, half of the chopped parsley, garlic powder, and sea salt.
• Spread garlic butter over the dough rectangle and place in fridge until the butter is firm (10-20 minutes).
• Remove from fridge and fold dough over onto itself, creating a rectangle half the size with the garlic butter sealed inside.
• Cut dough into 6 equal strips and then cut each strip in half down the middle. Stretch and braid each pair of strips together into a knot shape, cupping them into a ball-shape.
• Place each garlic knot into a lightly-greased jumbo muffin tin compartment and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise at room temperature for 2-3 hours, or in a warm spot for 1-2 hours.
• Once the dough is double in size and the knots have domed over the muffin tin, preheat oven to 375°F.
• Remove plastic. Bake knots for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and springy. You can use a cake tester to register doneness in the middles.
• Let knots cool, then remove from muffin tin. Pour leftover pooled garlic butter from muffin tin carefully into a bowl and add 1/3 cup olive oil.
• In another bowl, combine grated parmesan and the other half of the chopped parsley.
• One at a time, dip the knots in the olive oil and butter mixture, then roll in the parmesan to coat.
• Serve warm with marinara sauce, olive oil, or extra garlic butter.

Notes

• Your dough is perfectly proofed when a press of a finger results in the dough springing back about halfway. It should be a little jiggly, too. 
• Rolling the knots in parmesan can cause the cheese to get gloopy quickly. If you need to, sprinkle the cheese mixture over the knots instead on a wire rack over a baking sheet, collecting the excess cheese. 
• You can use confit garlic cloves instead of raw in this recipe, if you’d like. To confit – make sure you peel the garlic first, which makes the process much easier!