Pumpkin Party: appetizers part 1

Finally, the recipes from the Pumpkin Party.

We'll start small- wamozart12 is forgetful and overwhelmed, and can't seem to track down all the pictures.

First. let me present the shining pumpkin star of the pumpkin party,
Pumpkin Garlic Knots.

This is the same basic recipe I used on the beet pizza dough I made a while ago, but they use pumpkin puree (canned, in this case) instead of beet puree. I also used honey instead of agave nectar. The recipe is from (never)home maker. I actually doubled it to make 1.5 recipes of garlic knots, and used the remaining dough for the pizza I'll tell you about in the next post.

Pumpkin Garlic Knots,
from (never)home maker

Ingredients:

1 cup warm water (not hot! I'd recommend 100F or less, despite what some cookbooks say- but I am the Yeast Whisperer (so says my husband) and that's what I say.
1T active dry yeast
1-2T honey
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1T olive oil
1t kosher salt
3.5-4 cups AP flour

In the bowl of your KA mixer, combine the water, yeast, and some of the honey. Mix around, let sit for 10 minutes, until the yeast wakes up and makes it frothy.

Stir in the remaining honey, pumpkin, olive oil and salt. Then add the flour, 2 cups at first and mix to combine, then add a cup at a time and stir with your bread hook (or by hand) until the dough is the right consistency- it comes together, and is still a little sticky, but not horribly sticky. Even if it is sticky, you can add a little more flour as you form the knots, after rising.

Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place, at least 2 hours.

Punch down the dough and start to form the knots. Alternatively, divide in 2 or 3 pieces and use for pizza dough. At this point, you can wrap the dough in plastic wrap and store in the fridge or freezer.

Knots: take a small bit of dough, about 2T. Roll into a snake, then tie into a regular old square knot. This won't be neat, the dough will probably stick itself- but messy is fine! You're just going to eat it later, anyway.

Preheat your oven to 425F, place the rolls on a parchment-lined cookie sheet or on your pizza stone, and bake for 10-20 minutes, depending on how large your rolls are. They're done when they're beginning to brown.

Once the rolls have cooled a bit, you can eat them as is, or make them into garlic knots. I combine 4-5 garlic cloves, finely minced, 1t kosher salt (sea salt is even better) and about 1/4-1/3 cup olive oil in a bowl (or for easy cleanup, a zip top bag). Then I threw the rolls in and mixed them around, til they were coated in the garlic, salt and olive oil. Best served a little warm. If you don't eat them all at once (what?!), they'll get a little soggy after a few days, from the olive oil.