green and granola

If the increasing posts on baked goods and soup, the changing leaves and cooler nights, the need for layers (sometimes even during the day) weren’t enough to tip you off, the autumnal equinox has officially occurred.  On September 23rd, fall arrived in the Northern Hemisphere.  That means that even though it was almost 83°F today here in Minneapolis, these pumpkin garlic knots were not just ok but seasonally appropriate to make…right?  Well, I don’t need excuses.  And you won’t need excuses either, once you make these you will smack yourself in the head and wonder where they’ve been all your life.  These are a beauty of a bread recipe, and though a little more complex than a traditional ‘quick bread’, they really are expedient and low-maintenance bread.  Great little sides with soup, pasta, salad, or really anything else you want to eat them with.  The original recipe hails from here, and as you can see, Ashley has many tasty and easy recipes to play around with.  The nifty thing about Ashley is that she sneaks veggies into everything, almost as if her brain were a picky toddler she’s trying to trick into eating more greens (we don’t condone that, but more on that later).  These knots are no exception, they have pumpkin and sometimes carrot and you could probably play around with that quite a lot.  Can you tell I’m excited about them?Makes approximately 4 lbs dough (I doubled the original double batch – you won’t be sorry if you do too!) 2 cups warm water 2 tablespoons active dry yeast 4 tablespoon honey 1 ⅓ cups canned pumpkin 4 tablespoons olive oil 1 ½ tsp garlic granules (optional) 1 tbsp kosher salt 3 ½ cups white flour 3 ½ cups whole wheat flour Mix water, yeast, and honey in large mixing bowl, or if you have it, a standing mixer with dough attachment (this is what I used and it made it all even easier).   Blend for a moment or two and then allow yeast to become frothy.  Add pumpkin, olive oil, garlic, and salt and then mix for another minute.  With mixer on (or by hand if you are doing it that way, Ashley’s original recipe goes into great detail on how to do it by hand), gradually add the flours, monitoring the moisture content.  You’ll probably need the entire seven cups of flour, with more for rolling out the knots later, but some flours are different and you can more easily add more than take out flour.  Once dough is completely mixed and uniform in texture, oil a large mixing bowl and add dough; flip to coat the dough and then cover and let rise for about two hours. Heat oven to 425°, with pizza or baking stone inside.  While oven is heating, remove dough from bowl, sprinkle surface (I use a well-cleaned counter top) with flour, and smash dough down.  You can roll and knead it a few times, but don’t go too wild; it’s not necessary.  Your next step is to cut off about a ping-pong ball size peice of dough, then roll it out and ‘tie’ it in a knot.  You shouldn’t worry about tying the dough tightly, just loop the two ends as the dough will fill in space when it bakes.  Once you’ve got a dozen or so, pop them onto the baking stone and bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown.  While baking, mix about ½ cup olive oil with 4 or 5 finely minced raw garlic cloves, as well as salt and pepper, in a large mixing bowl.  Once you remove the bread from the oven, throw into the bowl with the oil mixture, stir around to coat vigorously, and then place on paper towels until the mix is absorbed.  Serve and enjoy! * Note: I made half of these for my family and they lasted about two or three days with soup and salad.  The other half I froze and understand it lasts for up to a month in the freezer.  (never home) maker discusses the use of this dough for pizza as well.