As some of you know, I love cooking. And I love anything pizza and bread related. Recently, I perfected my garlic dough balls recipe, so I thought I’d share it with you.
Ingredients:
For the dough balls:
- 500g bread flour
- 10g fresh yeast* or one sachet of dry yeast
- 5g garlic granules
- 5g onion granules
- 5g dried basil
- about 200ml lukewarm water
- 2 tbsp olive oil
For the coating and the glaze:
- semolina flour, for dusting
- 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
- 20g – 30g butter
- 1 tsp dried oregano
* if you can, many larger supermarkets in the UK that have a bakery usually part with a bit of yeast if you ask nicely
Method:
- Sift the flour, the onion and garlic granules as well as the basil into a mixing bowl. Mix the yeast with the water (if using dried yeast, wait until the mix starts to show bubbles), then add the oil into the yeast-water mixture. Then incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly, either in a machine or by hand, until you have a nice and stretchy dough (you may need a bit more water in the process).
- Once a nice and stretchy dough has formed, pour a tbsp of olive oil into the mixing bowl, place the dough into the bowl and shake the bowl a little to coat the dough. Cover with cling film and leave to stand for at least 8h, and up to 20h. The dough should at least have doubled in size and start to look bubbly.
Nice and bubbly - Sprinkle the top of the dough lightly with flour, then transfer it to a lightly-floured work surface. Then roll the dough out with a rolling pin to a square of about 1/2 inch thickness.
- Using a pizza cutter (or a knife), cut the dough roughly into 2 inch / 5cm squares. Each square will form one dough ball, so if you like you can make these squares smaller or larger!
- Pour a bit of semolina flour into a shallow bowl. Wet your palms lightly, then take a square and, roll the dough between your palms into tight small balls. Drop each ball separately into the semolina bowl, so that it coats each ball nicely, then place onto a baking sheet lined with greaseproof baking paper.
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Making the garlic glaze Once you are finished, leave the baking sheet on your kitchen counter, uncovered, for about an hour.
- After an hour, preheat the oven to about 180 degrees C and make the garlic glaze: put the freshly crushed garlic, oregano and the butter into a microwaveable bowl and microwave for about 10 seconds, or until the glaze is hot and glaze-like.
- Gently brush the glaze over the top of each dough ball. I prefer to use a silicone pastry brush, but any brush you use for cakes or pastry will do. Make sure you cover each ball with the butter and a few bits of garlic. You may need more butter as you go along, depending on how many dough balls you made.
Brush them gently and evenly - Put the baking tray into the centre of the oven and bake for around 15 minutes, or until the top of the dough balls is a light brown colour and they sound hollow when tapping the bottom. Place on a wire rack to cool.
Now you can now either eat them straight away, or you can freeze them for up to 3 weeks. Whenever you want to make a portion, take a few out, let them defrost for half an hour and heat them up in the oven at 100 degrees C for about 10 minutes.
Enjoy! 🙂
