When I was a young teen in Dallas, the options for fun and entertainment were limited. You could go to the mall. You could go to the movies. And you could eat at restaurants. Yes, there were bad things I could have been getting into, but I was, and am, a good girl!

My friends and I would always go to Richardson Square Mall (RIP). My mom would give me a 10$ bill, which could give me a whole afternoon of fun. There was hardly anything there except some cheap stores and restaurants. But even then I knew that mom and pop restaurants were better than the chain restaurants in the food court. It wasn’t a trip to the mall without cheesy bread and garlic knots, from a place I don’t even remember the name. Eventually the mall was demolished, but the memory of greasy, garlicy bread was not.

I didn’t plan on making bread until Kyle came home with a pound of Italian sausage, half mild and half hot. He made a great tomato sauce using the sausage (I was obsessivly asking for measurements as he cooked, so that I could share the recipe) and boiled some spaghetti to serve with the sauce. But we love those carbs, so I knew we couldn’t enjoy spaghetti without bread. Bread that you dunk and coat in oil and garlic. Heck yea!

Garlic Bread Knots
yield: 36 – 40 knots

2 cups Warm Water
1 (.75oz) pack Active Dry Yeast
1 TBS Salt
1 TBS Sugar
5-6 cups AP Flour

3 TBS Good Quality Olive Oil
4 Garlic Cloves, minced
1 tsp Salt
1 TBS Parsley, chopped
2 TBS Parmesan

1. You can make this bread in your electric mixer using a dough hook, in your breadmaker on the dough setting, or by hand. First combine the water, yeast, sugar and salt. Let sit 5 minutes.
2. Add flour and combine. Knead for at least 10 minute (5 minutes in electric mixer) until the dough is shiny and smooth.
3. Coat the bottom of a large bowl with olive oil and place dough in bowl. Flip dough over (so it now has oil on both sides) and let rise in a draft free area one hour or until doubled in size.
4. Punch down the dough. Keep dividing the dough in halves until you have 36 – 40 pieces of dough. Roll into 4 – 5 inch ropes and tuck one end under the other, forming a ‘knot’.
5. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and let rise in a draft free area one hour. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Meanwhile combine the last 5 ingredients.
6. Use a pastry brush or dunk the bread knots into the garlic oil. Enjoy!

Tomato Sauce with Italian Sausage
yield:  1 qt sauce

4 TBS EVOO
8 garlic cloves, smashed
1/2  Onion, medium dice
1 tomato
4 oz tomato paste
1 tsp Red Pepper Flakes
1/2 lb Spicy Italian Sausage
1/2 lb Mild Italian Sausage
5 Tomatoes, diced (not seeded)
1/4 cup Green Onions, chopped
4 Basil Leaves, chopped
1 cup Water
2 TBS Sugar
1 TBS Salt
2 tsp Black Pepper

1. Add oil to a sauce pan and turn to medium low heat. Add crushed garlic cloves to pan and cook for 5 minutes, until aromatic. If the garlic is browning turn down the heat, you want to slightly cook and infuse the oil. Add onion to garlic and cook 5 minutes.
2. Add tomatoes and cook another 5 minutes on medium low heat. Add the tomato paste and turn the heat up to medium high to start to caramelize the sugar in the tomato paste. Add red pepper flakes and sausage. Cook until sausage is fulled cooked, about 5 minutes, stirring often.
3. Add tomatoes, green onions, basil, sugar and water. Simmer until sauce reduces and has a thick consistency, around 45 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Serve on top of or tossed with pasta.

These garlic knots made me remember my days as a mall rat. I tried to recreate the cheese bread by wrapping mozzarella cheese with some of the dough, but it wasn’t the same as I remember. It was delicious, but needs some work if I want to recreate the mall recipe.

The garlic knots on the other hand were reminiscent of the ones I had 10 years ago. Soft and garlicky. Not too greasy, and not too browned. They were great the next day toasted, after the garlic oil had soaked into the bread overnight. One tip: Don’t eat these before a date… or before speaking to anyone within a 5 foot radius.