Well, I did it. I broke my oven.
After a week of intense pizza-making, my oven decided that it was having no more of this high-heat nonsense and promptly decided that it was going to go on strike.
The stovetop still works, but the oven just makes a clicking noise and stays as cold as my hopes and dreams for weekend baking 😦
If my landlord doesn’t fix it in the next day or so, this will certainly throw a wrench into my plan for this month’s Daring Kitchen challenge. It is strongly looking like I am going to have to get creative fast.
Thankfully, before my oven decided that it had lived through enough, I was able to crank out these awesome garlic knots using Patricia Wells‘ basic pizza dough recipe.
Since I used the rest of the green garlic I got at the Greenmarket, the garlic butter turned out to be more like a garlic spread. No matter, the results were still sloppily delicious. I inhaled about four in a row while standing in my kitchen. They were just so soft, pillowy and slathered with green garlicky goodness that I couldn’t eat just one or two . . . or, erm, three!
On another note, I passed that darned Spanish exam! Tequila para todos!!!
Ingredients:
For Patricia Wells’ Basic Pizza Dough:
1 teaspoon of active dry yeast
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 1/3 cups of lukewarm water (between 105°-115°)
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 teaspoons of salt
3 3/4 cups of bread flour (thank you RubyandWheaky!) or all-purpose flour
For the Marinara Sauce:
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes (if you don’t live in the Tri-State area, you can order Jersey Fresh tomatoes here, or use the best San Marzano tomatoes that you can find)
Salt
For the Young, Green Garlic Spread:
2 bulbs of young, green garlic, white and green parts trimmed and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons of butter
1 teaspoon of salt
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese for sprinkling
How to prepare:
1. In a large bowl, mix together the yeast, the warm water and the sugar. Let it stand for about 5 minutes before stirring in the olive oil and the salt.
2. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the flour, a little bit at a time, until most of the flour has been absorbed and the dough begins to pull together. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured countertop and knead it until it is smooth and elastic, about 5 to 6 minutes. Shape the dough into a ball and transfer it to a large lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let the dough rise between 8-12 hours in the refrigerator, or until it has doubled or tripled in size.
3. When the dough has risen, remove it from the refrigerator and punch it down. Let the dough rise again until it has doubled in size.
4. While the dough is rising, heat two tablespoons of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the tomatoes. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the tomatoes, stirring frequently, until all the oil has been incorporated and the sauce has thickened. Adjust the seasoning.
5. Preheat the oven to 400°.
6. Divide the dough into 15 2-ounce portions. Use your hands to roll and stretch each portion into a 6-8 inch-long strip. Make a knot, and tuck the ends under the bottom of the knot. Arrange the knots on a parchment paper-lined sheet pan so that they are evenly spaced apart. Bake the knots for about 20-25 minutes, or until they are browned and golden.
7. While the knots are baking, soften the green garlic in the olive oil and butter over medium heat. When the garlic is soft, season it with about a teaspoon of salt. Transfer everything to a food processor and process it until you have a smooth purée.
8. When the knots are done, remove them from the oven and let them sit until they are just cool enough to handle. Spread the green garlic purée over the top of each knot. Let the knots cool and absorb the the melted butter and olive oil in the purée. Sprinkle each knot with Parmesan cheese and serve with marinara sauce on the side.
coolcookstyle 
Oh how terrible! 😦 I hope you have a responsive landlord who fixes things quickly. I know it’s not the same but could you borrow someone’s toaster oven until your regular oven is fixed?
I’m so happy that you passed your exam! Woo hoo! (insert happy dance here) You deserve some tequila and a new oven. 🙂 You must feel a great sense of relief.
The rolls and the sauce look fabulous as always. Rolls and sauce are always good comfort food. I don’t have any experience with green garlic. When the farmers market starts up in early May I’ll keep my eye out for it.
Thanks for the mention! I appreciate it. 🙂
Me too! I hope they fix it tomorrow instead of leaving me oven-less over the weekend. I might be able to ask my neighbors if I can use theirs. I don’t think they would mind, but I hope that it doesn’t come to that.
I am very relieved to have passed that exam. I think that after my dissertation is finished, I will finally get around to learning how to speak it instead of just being able to read it!
Early May is right around the corner! And soon you will have some amazing berries too. No one does berries like Maine! But I am also convinced that you must have some excellent foraging up there. Have you ever done that? It’s so trendy down here to forage . . . in Central Park. People do it, but many more people also walk their dogs all over the park, so I would think twice about eating it.
AND, there will be more Ruby and Wheaky mentions coming up! Hope you don’t mind!
What’s the latest on the oven situation? Is it back in business? I’ve never been on an official foraging trip. I think there are people who give courses on that topic. I’d be so worried about picking the wrong mushroom or the wrong berry. When I was little we used to pick blueberries. In the spring we would hunt for fiddleheads. Sometimes I would find beechnuts….those were good. Acorns are good too if they’re fresh. I bet I sound like a total redneck.
You do not sound like a redneck at all! You sound like you live in an amazing place! The only thing I could really forage for in NYC are crumpled Metrocards and bottles and cans with a deposit. If it were the 80’s or early 90’s, I could forage for hypodermic needles and used . . . well . . . you know, used yucky things.
Yes! The oven is fixed!!!!! Daring Kitchen plans are saved!
Its very sad to read of your oven demise. We have oven issues. The door is trying to fall off but that sucker still closes given a hefty kick. One day I will end up putting my foot through it. Still thats nothing to the washing machine which lives next door to the oven, The SOB is dying but slowly, I can still get it work after an hour of hitting, tapping and general swearing (much to my wife’s dismay). I love the look of the green bits on your knots!
So sad. I feel your pain too. My broiler drawer “door” only shuts when I kick it shut. I think my oven is mad at me for that reason too.
As for the washing machine, I say that as long as you can get it to work eventually, that’s all that matters.
Thanks for the compliment about the knots! Green garlic is the prettiest green color!
I can not believe your oven has gone NYC mad LOL. He definitely went on strike. So what you’re gointo have to do is go in there and tell him get his act together or you will have to replace him. Maybe that will work :). And these garlic knots looks so darn delicious
Yeah. It has been a moody oven for years, but I really think it broke on purpose. Stupid oven 😉
The garlic knots were delicious! Even microwaved because I can’t reheat them in my broken oven!
I hope you get your oven back! (not in the same way that Stella got her groove back, but you know what I mean) Green garlic knots looks amazing. I need to get some green garlic soon, the first farmer’s market opens here the end of May!
Haha! Hopefully not the way that Stella got her groove back. I do still have to make food in it, after all 😉
I hope they fix it soon. I never realized how dependent I was on it until now . . .
No Farmer’s Market until the end of May? Maybe it will be earlier this year?
There are no words for how much this post made me salivate. perfect garlic knots MIGHT be one of the best things EVER, I am totally going to have to make some of these too!!!
Do it! If only because it sounds like your oven still works!
Make and eat some more for me!!!!
Congrats on your test.
Thank you! I am relieved to know I passed!
Oh, no!! But the knots look great. And congrats on the test. So, how many languages do you speak now?
Thankfully, the oven is fixed now! But man, I really was upset to be without one . . .
Thanks for the congrats! I grew up bilingual (English and Cantonese) and speak French.
I took two semesters of Arabic, but I can only remember how to say different permutations of chicken (like boiled chicken, roasted chicken, stewed chicken, baked chicken, spicy chicken, and “chicken on fire”). I know it’s totally random, but for some reason there were a lot of examples with chicken in my textbook! Sometimes it comes in handy like in restaurants when I can point to something and say, “Chicken!!!!”
And now I can add Spanish. Only written Spanish. But if you get me tipsy enough, who knows!
Love the description of saying chicken every which way in Arabic. My French is much the same way. In a restaurant, people think I’m brilliant. Outside of that, however, I become much like David Sedaris in Me Talk Pretty One Day! I do see, though, how once you get one Romance language down, the others pretty quickly fall into place.
😦 to the broken oven.
But 😀 to the garlic knots – I’m going to make some to go with my soup tonight.
Your pics are so gorgeous I wanted to lick the screen LOL
Aw, thanks! I’m sure your garlic knots turned out beautifully because all you food does!
I’m very glad your oven is fixed. 🙂
Me too! It seems like they recalibrated it when they fixed it. Now I have to get used to it all over again