Garlic knots — made with pizza dough
Garlic knots are what pizza dough does on its night off: scraps of the same dough, tied in a knot, baked gold and drowned in garlic butter. Pizzerias make them from the trimmings — you can make them on purpose.
The only real question is how much dough, and that's where this page earns its keep: say how many knots you want and it weighs the flour, water, salt and yeast to the gram — the same engine that runs the calculator. The garlic butter is just enthusiasm.
How much dough
For 16 knots, on New York dough — 30 g of dough a knot:
| Ingredient | Baker's % | For 16 knots |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 100% | 283 g |
| Water | 63% | 178 g |
| Salt | 2.5% | 7.1 g |
| Olive oil | 2.5% | 7.1 g |
| Sugar | 1.5% | 4.2 g |
| Yeast | 0.23% | 0.6 g |
Making more or fewer? The dough scales straight off the count:
| Knots | Total dough | Flour |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | 240 g | 141 g |
| 16 | 480 g | 283 g |
| 24 | 720 g | 424 g |
| 32 | 960 g | 566 g |
The yeast is weighed for an example 8 h rise at 21 °C — set your real schedule in the calculator and it reweighs the pinch.
What else you’ll need
Beyond the dough — for 16 knots:
- 60 g butter (or the same in olive oil, to keep them vegan)
- 4 garlic cloves, finely grated
- 20 g Parmigiano Reggiano, finely grated
- a small handful of parsley, finely chopped
- flaky salt, to finish
How it’s done
- Make the dough: 16 × 30 g pieces of New York dough — 283 g flour, 178 g water, 7.1 g salt and the yeast, weighed by the calculator for your schedule. (Leftover pizza dough works too.)
- Cut the dough into 30 g pieces. Roll each into a rope about 15 cm long, tie it in a single loose knot, and tuck the ends underneath.
- Space the knots on a lined tray, cover, and prove 30–45 minutes, until puffy and not quite doubled.
- Bake at 220 °C / 430 °F for 12–15 minutes, until deep golden and cooked through.
- Meanwhile, warm the butter with the grated garlic over low heat until fragrant but not browned — burnt garlic turns bitter.
- Toss the hot knots in the garlic butter with the parsley and Parmigiano, then finish with flaky salt. Eat warm.
Questions from the counter
Can I really just use pizza dough?
That's the whole idea — garlic knots were invented to use up pizza-dough offcuts. Any ball of dough works; a New York-style dough, with its little bit of oil and sugar, bakes up the most tender, which is the base weighed here.
How many knots does a ball of dough make?
At 30 g a knot, a 320 g New York ball makes about ten. The dough table scales to whatever count you set, so you can match a batch to your appetite — or to the dough you have left over.
Can I make them ahead?
Shape the knots, cover, and refrigerate overnight — bake straight from cold, adding a couple of minutes. Baked knots also freeze well: reheat in a hot oven and re-toss in fresh garlic butter.
How do I make them without butter?
Swap the butter for the same weight of olive oil, warmed with the garlic the same way. It's the older Neapolitan move and happens to be vegan.
Get the dough
The New York preset weighs the batch and writes the schedule — mix, rise, shape, bake. Garlic knots is what you do with it.
The clock is a suggestion. The dough is the boss. In bocca al lupo!
Impasto is a free pizza dough calculator for Neapolitan, New York, Roman, Sicilian, Detroit, thin crust and focaccia doughs — flour, water, salt and yeast weighed in baker's percentages, with the fermentation schedule written for you.