Garlic oil — the recipe
A white pizza has no tomato to do the seasoning, so the oil steps up: olive oil warmed with crushed garlic until it can't keep a secret. Brushed edge to edge before the cheese, it's the quiet sauce under the boscaiola — and the reason nobody misses the red.
One reference batch below, weighed like everything on this site. The per-pizza dose is read from the pizza registry, so this page and the boscaiola page can never disagree.
What goes in
One batch — makes about 110 g:
about three cloves — peeled and lightly crushed, left whole
Scaling up is linear — double everything for a double batch.
Where it goes
The classics that use it, with the dose each one takes at its default size — the same numbers their recipe pages scale to your dough:
| Pizza | Per pizza | Batch covers |
|---|---|---|
| Boscaiola | 10 g | × 11 |
How it’s done
- Peel the cloves and crush them flat under the side of a knife — broken open, still in one piece.
- Warm the oil with the garlic in a small pan over the lowest heat until the cloves fizz gently at the edges, about ten minutes. Pale gold is the ceiling — browned garlic turns the whole batch bitter.
- Off the heat, let it steep as it cools for half an hour, then strain into a clean jar. The soft cloves are the cook's bonus — they spread like butter.
Keeps 4 days in the fridge, never on the counter — garlic in oil is the textbook botulism risk at room temperature, so think cold and quick, or freeze it in cubes for the season.
Questions from the counter
Why not just rub raw garlic on the dough?
Raw garlic under a roaring bake scorches into bitterness in spots and stays raw and angry in others. Infusing the oil first spreads the flavor evenly, takes the harsh edge off, and brushes on like a sauce — which on a white pie is exactly the job opening.
Is garlic in oil really a safety thing?
Yes — honest answer. Garlic is a low-acid bulb out of the ground, and sealed in oil at room temperature it's the classic home for botulism. Made fresh, kept cold and used inside a few days it's a non-issue; for a bottle that lives in the cupboard, buy a commercial one, which is acidified for exactly this reason.
Where else does it go?
Brush it on any crust the minute it leaves the oven, slick a focaccia with it, or finish the marinara's cousin you invent on a Tuesday. A few rosemary needles steeped in the warm oil is the boscaiola's favorite variation.
Put it on a pizza
The dough is the calculator’s job and the toppings are weighed on the recipe pages — this batch is ready for the classic below.
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.