Keto garlic knots are a delicious way to serve up fathead dough! Twisted little keto dinner rolls that pair perfectly with your favorite soup or keto stew.
This is the original keto garlic knots recipe! Accept no substitutes.
These tender little twists of keto garlic taste just like the ones you used to get from your favorite pizza place. But they have less than 3g net carbs per serving.
Too good to be true?
One bit of these buttery, garlicky koto bread twists and you might just think you’re dreaming. But they’re real, I promise.
Serve them alongside keto tuscan chicken soup or keto seafood chowder for a satisfying lunch or dinner.
Fun with fathead dough
Fathead dough really is remarkable stuff. It’s amazing that melted cheese and a little almond flour can become a stretchy keto pizza dough.
I use it many quite a number of recipes, both savory and sweet. And I have developed my own versions of the original that make it sturdier and more versatile. I call this version, which contains both almond and coconut flour, Magic Mozzarella Dough.
It really is magic! I’ve used it in sweet recipes too, like keto cinnamon twists.
My keto bagel recipe, on the other hand, takes only coconut flour so it’s a completely nut-free option.
Ingredients
For the dough, you will need:
- Shredded mozzarella
- Almond flour
- Coconut flour
- Butter
- Baking powder
- Garlic powder
- Egg
- Salt
For the garlic butter, you will need:
- Butter
- Parmesan cheese
- Garlic
- Salt
- Parsley
How to make keto garlic knots
Once you’ve mastered keto fathead dough, these keto garlic bread rolls are fun to make. Here are my best tips for getting it right.
- Whisk the dry ingredients. You want to have them ready to add to the melted cheese immediately so make sure they are all set before proceeding.
- Melt the cheese and butter. Keep them over low heat, stirring frequently, until the cheese is fully melted and you can stir them together. Then remove from heat.
- Add the dry ingredients and the egg. Start mixing these ingredients in immediately with a good flexible spatula. As long as you move quickly enough, the egg won’t curdle.
- Knead the dough. Just like bread, fathead dough becomes more cohesive with a little kneading. I recommend dusting the work surface lightly with almond flour to prevent sticking.
- Divide and roll into logs. You want to do this relatively quickly, as fathead dough gets loses elasticity the longer it sits.
- Shape into knots. Gently fold one end of the log over the other and push through.
- Brush with garlic butter. Use about half of the garlic butter mixture before baking, and keep the rest for brushing on after.
- Bake until golden and enjoy warm!
Frequently Asked Questions
The conventional wisdom for fathead dough states that pre-shredded mozzarella works best. It contains a bit of starch or cellulose that helps the consistency. However, I’ve actually had some luck with grating blocks of cheese myself. Just make sure that it is part-skim, as full-fat mozzarella will make the dough very greasy.
I don’t recommend it. Fathead dough made with just almond flour is very fatty and moist, and tends to spread a lot when baking.
You are better off using another drier flour like lupin or oat fiber, but you will need more of it. I recommend starting with 1/3 cup and adding a bit more if the dough is very sticky.
Fathead dough is tricky at the best of times and I can’t quite determine why this happens for some people. It’s dependent on so many different factors.
If it happens to you, don’t panic. Simply roll the dough into 8 balls, brush with some of the garlic butter, and bake them as dinner rolls. They will still be delicious!
Keto Garlic Knots Recipe
Ingredients
Garlic Knot Dough
- 1/2 cup (56 g) almond flour
- 1/4 cup (25 g) coconut flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp (0.5 tsp) garlic powder
- 1/4 tsp (0.25 tsp) salt
- 1 1/2 cups (168 g) shredded part skim mozzarella cheese, 6 ounces
- 5 tbsp butter, melted
- 1 large egg
Garlic Parmesan Butter
- 3 tbsp butter, melted
- 2 tbsp freshly grated parmesan
- 2 tsp minced garlic
- 3/4 tsp (0.75 tsp) salt
- 1/2 tsp (0.5 tsp) dried parsley
Instructions
Dough
- Preheat the oven to 350F and sprinkle a clean counter or a large silicone baking mat with almond flour.
- In a medium bowl, combine the almond flour, coconut flour, baking powder, garlic powder, and salt. In a large saucepan, melt the cheese and butter together over low heat until they are melted and can be stirred together.
- Remove from heat and add the almond flour mixture, then add the egg and stir everything together until a cohesive forms. Use a rubber spatula to really knead the dough together in the pan. It may still contain some streaks of cheese.
- Turn the dough out onto the prepared work surface and knead until uniform. This will only take a little kneading. If your dough is still very sticky, add a tablespoon or two more almond flour and work it in.
- Divide the dough into 16 equal portions. Roll each portion into a 7-inch log and tie gently into a knot. Place on prepared baking sheet a few inches apart (they will spread a bit).
Garlic Parmesan Butter
- In a small bowl, whisk together the butter, parmesan, garlic, salt, and parsley. Brush about half of the butter over knots before baking. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until firm to the touch and golden brown.
- Remove and brush with remaining garlic butter. Serve warm.
Nutrition
Nutritional Disclaimer
Please note that I am not a medical or nutritional professional. I am simply recounting and sharing my own experiences on this blog. Nothing I express here should be taken as medical advice and you should consult with your doctor before starting any diet or exercise program. I provide nutritional information for my recipes simply as a courtesy to my readers. It is calculated using MacGourmet software and I remove erythritol from the final carb count and net carb count, as it does not affect my own blood glucose levels. I do my best to be as accurate as possible but you should independently calculate nutritional information on your own before relying on them. I expressly disclaim any and all liability of any kind with respect to any act or omission wholly or in part in reliance on anything contained in this website.
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Love your site! I don’t have garlic powder but plenty of fresh garlic. Could I substitute fresh for powder?
Thanks!
I think if you’re talking just about the garlic powder in the dough, you can skip it and just do the garlic that’s in the butter.
Is there anything else you can use this dough recipe for besides breadsticks/knots and pizza crust? Just wondering as they say it’s SO good. Also…to just make breadsticks I guess you just don’t knot it…right? Just roll out strips n bake? I’m gonna try making them for a friend that likes sticks -not the knots. Thanx in advance. LOVE your site n recipes❤️
There is a sweet version for danishes and such. Search danish on my blog and you will see.
Another question about the mozzarella –is it the bagged part-skim?
Yep!
After reading all the comments I’m a bit confused about the amount of mozzarella cheese to use in this recipe. Is it 1-1/2 cups = 6 ounces shredded?
You got it. You can measure by cups or by ounces. Ounces is more accurate.
First I made this dough for the Jalapeno pizza and my husband just loved it. First dough he really liked! I made it again twice cause it is just that good. Today I used this dough and made thin crust pizzas using a tortilla press. I got 7 8 inch pizzas. Just fabulous thin crispy crust! I also made a wonderful crispy bread for a sandwich. Oh my my I am just loving this dough. Just spectacular! I posted pictures on ur Facebook page 😉
Great idea, Allison!
I made these recently and my husband and I loved them! I didn’t make knots, just pinched off dough and patted it down a bit to make little biscuits. I skipped the Parmesan and salt in the topping and we found them plenty cheesy with a nice salty tang without it.
I made these to go along with a soup and salad dinner, but they would be great as appetizers at a party. Next time I make them I will experiment – maybe wrap the dough round an olive or brush with butter & pesto.
I was so excited to try these and while the consistency was better than I hoped for, I couldn’t eat coconut flavored garlic knots. I could see this working for something sweet where a subtle coconut flavor works but garlic and coconut was not a hit (I used Bob’s Redmill, if that makes a difference). Would this recipe work with a different nut flour as opposed to coconut or maybe a reduced amount of coconut? I guess we just really aren’t fans of coconut, we’ve had the same flavor issue when we use coconut oil for frying.
I don’t taste coconut at all in these! I really think you need some very dense flour to make these work. You could try oat fiber.
Like your suggestion of oat fibre. Wondering if quantity would be the same. Thank you.
I just had to comment on another use for these garlic knots. I made a double batch weeks ago and stuck them in the freezer. Today, I was looking for some options for my dinner salad and was dying for croutons. I defrosted a few of the garlic knots, cut them into cubes and toasted them up in a pan on the stove with some butter. They turned out perfectly like a delicious crunchy garlic crouton.
Great idea!
hello from Sydney,Carolyn
thanks for having the best recipes!
every thing that I made so far worked really well, but not the knots :((((
as I live in Sydney I could not find any skim shredded mozzarella, so got the ” normal” one do you think it could be the reason? all was the same…
thanks again for all you do in the eating dpt! :)))))))
deborah
Yes, it’s definitely the cheese. The shredded cheese around here has starch to keep it from clumping. Not a lot, so it doesn’t really add to the carb count, but it helps the consistency of this. You could try adding a teaspoon or two of corn or arrowroot starch but I honestly have no idea if that would truly help. Sorry!
thanks Carolyn,
I got a low carb baking powder from bob’s red mill, will try to add it in my next batch and let you know how it turned up! :)) my husband had them in any case. gobbled them up, and thought they were delicious:) called them salty biscuits! 🙂
cheers,
deborah
Carolyn, I saw this recipe and put it away for a special day. Today, Easter Sunday was it! I can’t believe how great these turned out. Golden brown, and slathered in butter and garlic, how can you go wrong?!!! Delicious! Thank you so much for bringing these back into our lives, we missed garlic knots! This will be a staple, and I know even my Italian bread eating family will love these! Thank you,thank you, thank you! PS, I had a little trouble rolling the Joe as well as your pictures showed, but it doesn’t matter, they came out shaped good enough, and tasted great, LOL.
Hello! I just tried making a batch of these, but I seem to have made a wrong turn somewhere. My dough came out fairly oily and somehow crumbly! I was able to kneed it together but it wasn’t smooth like a dough, and it slowly started to break apart when I tried to bend it. Any idea what might have been the problem?
Thanks!
When this happens, it could be the kind of cheese (did you use store-bought part skim shredded mozz, as the recipe indicates?), or it’s the almond flour or the coconut flour. What brands did you use for those?
Hi Carolyn, thanks for your help. I had a suspicion it was the cheese. I just used the block of mozzarella I had in the fridge I think.it was Kraft. I’ll have to see if I can hunt down partly skimmed mozzarella in the stores after the holiday. I used Bob’s red mill flour for both.
Hi Kailey,
This is exactly what happened to me, perfidious Carolyn’s suggestions to me may help you too?
Regards and good luck
Anthony
Thanks Anthony! I’d appreciate any help I could get, if you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.
Hi Carolyn,
Thank you so much for this recipe, I have been graph garlic bread for some time now and I thought this would be a perfect fit for my craving. When I tried to make them I had to use full fat mozzarella then when I added the viewer and egg I could immediately tell that it was too much fat, would you have any suggestion as to how I can fix this as we don’t get part skim mozzarella here in the UK.
Thank you
Anthony
Hmmm, not sure what do about this. Perhaps adding a little less butter (maybe cutting out 2 tbsp) would help? And then adding something to help emulsify all that fat into the mix…can you get some xanthan gum easily? Just 1/4 tsp might help.
I had whole milk mozzarella too and I reduced the butter to 3 tbls and added 2 tbls of cream. Worked great. I made 4 standard size rolls and 4 small pizza crusts. Very good. Thanks much.
Good to know!
I tried to make these for a dinner party on Saturday. The dough wouldn’t stick together to form rolls or any other shape. I used Honeyville Almond Super Fine Grind and Arrowhead Mills Coconut Flour. Any suggestions?
Could easily have been the coconut flour, as I have never used that brand. What kind of mozzarella did you use?
Fabulous!!! Just fabulous. Will definitely be making these again!
I really really want to make these, but I suspect the coconut flour I have has gone bad. Do you think it will be ok without? And I have a ball of fresh mozz – can I use that instead of the type listed?
Everyone says fresh mozz is a disaster so I wouldn’t.
I apologize if this was posted already, I didn’t see it. Could I prepare the dough for these now and then bake them this evening before dinner or would that pose a problem?
I think it would be fine. refrigerate the dough and let it warm up before baking.
Thank you! 🙂