Serves 6, or 4 gluttons (this is about 1/3 of them)
I’m obviously not very good at getting older. Where some people can do it with grace and dignity, I feel like the best options are to create havoc and throw all of my cards in the air to see where they land. Turning 25 meant leaving everything– my job, my boyfriend, my house, my car–=to start over. It ended up being the best thing I could have done. Turning 30 has been a little more modest in its upheaval, but I’m still acting like a crazy woman from time to time. Going out for margaritas at lunch, only to turn it into a day-long fiesta (it was St. Patrick’s day!), going out for birthday drinks only to turn it into a night long fiesta, and the fallout is that after each of these extended fiestas, the following day is primarily siesta. And Chris has been the patron saint of errant wives by watching the little guy, picking me and my friends up, getting me water in the middle of the night, and letting me and my friends lounge around on the couch ordering pizza and watching Twilight movies pretty much every Sunday.
I haven’t bought a sports car and started dating 18 year old blondes, though, so I guess I’m doing okay by some standards.
Part of the problem with what have become affectionately (long-sufferingly) known as Lazy Pizza Sundays is that a hungover Kristie is a HUNGRY Kristie. I order everything on the menu, and the only thing my body really wants is breadsticks. ALL OF THE BREADSTICKS. And Dominos has recently come out with a type of breadstick called the “parmesan bite” that is basically just a little breadstick nugget. You pick what dipping sauce to use (marinara seems the obvious choice, unless you’re into that saturated fat liquid known as “garlic sauce”), and then go to town. Emmett loves them, too, so a side benefit of ordering pizza is that the child will eat calories.
Anyway, to save time, money, and extraneous ordering, I decided to develop a copycat recipe for the Dominos parmesan bites. And lo! They are delicious! I started with the assumption that the bread was just made from glorified pizza dough, so I made a batch of pizza dough using the basic King Arthur Flour refrigerator pizza dough, with some small adjustments.
- 3 C all-purpose flour, unbleached
- 2 C durum semolina flour
- 3 T pizza dough flavor (KAF) (optional)
- 3 T olive oil
- 2 t kosher salt
- 1 t active dry yeast
- 1.5 C water, lukewarm
- ——————————-
- 1 T garlic powder
- 3 T olive oil (plus extra to grease surfaces)
- 1 T butter, melted
- 1.4 C grated parmesan (plus 2 T for sprinkling)
- ½ t kosher salt
- In a breadmaker, or with your mixer, mix together the ingredients before the break and knead until smooth and elastic.
- In a greased tub with a lid, place dough and refrigerate, punching down once before bed and recovering.
- hours before you’re ready to bake, remove dough from fridge, punch down, and bring to room temperature until it begins to rise again.
- On a greased surface, roll dough in segments into a 1″ diameter snake and cut with a bench scraper or knife into 1.5″ hunks.
- Sprinkle with 2 T parmesan
- Place on a parchment-covered cookie sheet, covered, in a warm place to rise again
- Preheat oven to 425F. While it preheats, mix together second batch of ingredients in a large bowl.
- Bake bread bites until golden brown and puffy. Toss with seasoning/oil/butter mixture and serve with marinara.
To make the world’s easiest marinara sauce in about 3 minutes at home, buy a 15 oz jar of canned diced tomatoes with basil (Muir Glen organic works great). In a blender, combine the tomatoes, a single clove of garlic, and a teaspoon of salt and blend until smooth. Microwave to warm and serve it up. This also makes outstanding pizza sauce.
It’s like MAGIC. Extremely hungover, delicious, dippy, all-carb magic. And I’m currently both eating one myself right now, as well as watching the little guy eat one, so they make great leftovers. Nothing beats hot bread out of the oven, obviously, but these’ll do in a pinch.
If the Good Lord wanted us to be gluten-free, he wouldn’t have made bread taste like this.
As for my own behavior, I have promised Chris fewer lazy pizza Sundays due to hangovers and late nights, and more lazy pizza Sundays just because we CAN. This will probably be a good thing for my calorie count and my sleeping patterns, though it might interfere with the midnight texting of copies of my butt to Canadian strangers. Way to ruin my attempts at diplomacy, Chris. Like we want a war with our hat.
Thank you, thank you. Hope they taste as great as Dominos! My family is in love with these…can’t wait to try the recipe. And your writing is hilarious
I hope you like them, Cassie! I can’t seem to stop eating them. It’s a problem.
Nobody wants a war with our benevolent neighbors of the north… so if your ass is the key then I will allow it.