Garlic Knots

So I was stalking around what's cooking yesterday afternoon, and I saw a post about these rolls and they looked fantastic and I had all the ingredients on hand so I made them.  JT enjoyed them too, last night he said they were good, he's not much for words, but when I woke up from a nap this afternoon, I was home sick all day, he had eaten another one so I knew they were really good. 

Dough Glaze

3 cups of flour 2-3 cloves garlic

1 T. sugar 2 T. melted butter

2 t. yeast 1/2 t. Italian seasoning

1 1/4 t. salt

2 T olive oil

1/4 c. milk

1 c & 2 T lukewarm water

Combine dry ingredients in bowl of stand mixer fitted with dough hook.  Add all the wet ingredients.  Stir until combined.  Begin kneading dough with dough hook for 8 to 9 minutes or until dough is smooth yet elastic.  Transfer to a bowl that's been coated with olive oil and turn dough ball until lightly covered in oil.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour. 

Divide dough into 10 equal portions.  Roll each into a rope and tie into a knot, tucking the ends in on the center of each roll.  I did one roll at a time instead of rolling all the dough at once. 

Place on metal baking sheet and place each roll on the sheet.  Let rolls rise for about 45 minutes before glazing with the garlic butter.  Cook rolls for about 15 minutes at 375 or until golden brown. 

Wheat Bread

I attempted to make bread yesterday afternoon and for the first time in my life the dough just wouldn't rise, I've made bread alot and I just don't know what happened to it.  I tried again this afternoon and as you can see it came out much better.  I've been trying to make all of the things we eat myself, as well as trying to avoid a few things that I'm finding are in alot of foods.  On my no-no list is enriched floor, high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil.  In order to avid that in our bread it had to buy a pretty pricy loaf of bread and I'm trying hard to have save money on groceries, we were spending way too much money on them, but I'm happy to say that I've saved about 25 to 50 dollars off the bill each week.   I have decided to make all of our bread and rolls from now on, JT said if I kept up with it for a month I could buy a bread machine.  I am going to go pick up another loaf pan, because as you can see I have one very large loaf pan and one very small one.  I'm going to hit Bed, Bath and Beyond this week and pick up a few new pans. 

I just used a wheat bread recipe that I found in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.