How To Make Restaurant Style Garlic Rolls

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Years ago, I set out on a quest to make my own garlic rolls at home. I had had my first brush with them at a pizzeria and I hungered for a way to make an Italian pizzeria garlic rolls recipe myself. I just couldn’t seem to find it. Spur of the moment, I decided to look for a good recipe, and to try one last time. I found it.

How to Make Homemade Garlic Rolls

If you want a recipe to make homemade garlic rolls at least part of the way in a bread machine, you could use your machine for a part of the process, though it is very fast to whip up with an electric stand mixer. It would take more time to get your bread machine out of the cabinet than it does to make them in your electric stand mixer. It is impressively fast.

Still, others may prefer to pick up their own pizza dough, either from a local pizzeria or at the grocery store, and begin with that part already completed. Can I urge you one last time to try this amazing recipe for garlic rolls with my favorite recipe for homemade pizza? We typically have pizza night once a week. We bake this crust or use it on the grill (grilled pizza is an awesome thing), and now–I use it for garlic rolls!

The secret to this recipe, at least, as the bakers of many rolls share, is to always make the garlic roll topping fresh. While I feel like it really needs the addition of parsley to brighten the flavor and add that eye-catching appeal, if you don’t have it, you can still make them. I did that once before as well. Just be sure to grab parsley at the store for next time or, better yet, start a windowsill garden for the sole purpose of having parsley for these rolls. I think I may have a problem.

A Brief History of Garlic

Garlic has long been a part of our culinary heritage. For more than 5,000 years, this member of the onion family has been praised for its versatility in its use of cooking and its medicinal aspects. Even the Ancient Egyptians used garlic. So, too, did the Roman soldiers, Greek soldiers, and used by ancient Greeks in religious practices, and appeared in Egyptian tombs.

The Yale Babylonian Tablets, dating from 1600-1700 BCE even include recipes! Tablet YBC 4644 (link to an excellent article about the recipes) contains twenty-five Mesopotamian recipes. A French historian, Jean Bottéro, published the recipes in 1995, noting that each one contains garlic, leeks, and onion. His English version, (affiliate link, please read how I use Amazon to shop local) The Oldest Cuisine in the World: Cooking in Mesopotamia, was published in the 2000s.
Yale Babylonian Tablets contain Mesopotamian #recipes using garlic! Click To Tweet

Did you know that there are a slew of different varieties of garlic? How Stuff Works shares that there are more than 400 kinds of garlic. For the rest of us, we are more familiar with just two: a softneck type and elephant garlic (which isn’t actually a kind of garlic at all, but a leek). What’s more, did you realize just how much garlic people consumed? According to the USDA, Americans consumed 2.3 pounds of garlic in 2010. That is a lot of garlic! I must admit, I am sure that I eat much more than that. I am Italian, don’t you know?

The Agricultural Marketing Research Center points out another startling fact: China is the biggest producer of garlic by far. Can you believe that 2/3 of the world’s garlic comes from China? I had no idea. India and South Korea are the next big garlic producers but when it comes to world rankings, the United States comes in at eighth. According to the AGMRC, California harvested 23,000 acres of garlic in 2013. That’s a lot of garlic. Nevada, New York, Oregon, and Washington are other states with big acreage devoted to garlic.

Popularity Contest

We love our garlic so much, that we are the top importers for the stuff when it is in its fresh form. We export a little to Mexico and Canada, but we import far more from China (of course), as well as Argentina and Mexico. Who knew? It’s not exactly surprising, I suppose, when you learn one old fact, that during a typical day, 18% of the population eats at least one food containing garlic, at least as determined by the USDA’s 1994-96 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals. I imagine that that number is higher now. If you are worried about bad breath, this BBC article relates scientific findings stating that sipping a glass of milk while eating garlic will help reduce it.

But we aren’t alone. Here in the US, again according to AGMRC, garlic was used in the 1700s. Some sources say that garlic became popular with the influx of immigrants in the 1800s, but others say that it didn’t really become hugely popular until the 1920s. I can’t seem to dig in to the “why” behind that one, which is slightly driving me bonkers. Does it have to do with World War I? What about the 1800s? Do you know the answer?

The US is a top importer of garlic. 2/3 of the world's #garlic comes from China! Click To Tweet

When used as a medicine, garlic is used both as a preventative and a treatment for a huge array of conditions. Fevers, coughing, high or low blood sugar, snakebite, cold, flu, tick bite prevention, coronary heart disease, heart attack…and the list of things that are often treated using a form of garlic on WebMD goes on and on. It boils down to a chemical in garlic called allicin. That chemical is also what is responsible for giving garlic its strong, notable odor.

Baking Your Garlic Rolls

Just do your best not to bake them to a medium or dark brown. You want the rolls to still stay light so the Garlic Butter Sauce will stick to them. In fact, it will look as though these rolls are underdone when you first take them out of the oven. They are not. Give one a little jab and you will see that they are firm to the touch. Looks can be deceiving.

You will see what I mean. I have made this recipe for garlic rolls many times since the first batch and almost feel a little guilty for not sharing them before now. But, as they say, it is better late than never. In the meantime, I’m going to go eat a garlic roll. I got this recipe from Online Athens but it hails from Marcella’s, a once popular pizzeria. Bakers shared the recipe with the news source and now, I am sharing it with you! Food, much like recipes, is always better when it is shared, don’t you think?

Italian Pizzeria Garlic Rolls Recipe

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