These garlic pizza twists are frustratingly hard to make, but yummy to eat

If you enjoy smelling like garlic, getting frustrated and making a gigantic mess, then this recipe is for you!

After all is said and done, though, it’s pretty tasty. So bear with me. We’re taking a journey through Pizzaland, but we’re bypassing actual pizza and going all the way to Breadstickland, which extensive cartological surveys have shown is right next to Pizzaland. On the way through Pizzaland, however, we’re going to collect some pizza toppings: tomato sauce, Parmesan cheese, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil, as well as enough garlic to burn your nostrils. (In a pleasant way, of course.) We’ll end up at an exciting culinary destination called Garlic Pizza Twists.

The concept is simple: layer pizza toppings between two rectangles of fresh pizza dough, slice into ribbons, twist, brush with garlic butter and bake. The practice is a little dicier. Here’s why: Pizza dough is not your friend. It does not want to be a rectangle. It would much rather be an amoeba-shaped blob. It also does not want to twist, and it certainly does not want to hold onto any fillings if forced to bend into a twisty shape. The dough actively seeks to thwart you and sends bits of grated cheese and herbs spilling willy-nilly onto the baking sheet. Pizza dough is the sly, aggressive junkyard dog of foodstuffs and it will defy your every command.

I make homemade pizza using a bag of fresh, premade dough about once a week. It is my favorite thing to make. I use my hands to shape the dough into a laughably rough, circlish form, but I do not force it to do anything it really, really does not want to do. In this context, the pizza dough and I are easy companions. I appreciate the pizza dough for its finer qualities: it bakes up perfectly golden and chewy with a crisp bottom 100 percent of the time. I get the sense, though, that I am merely doing its bidding.

When I try to do other things with pizza dough, its displeasure is obvious. Its answer is always, “No. You cannot do that. Stop that nonsense right now and just make pizza with me.” The problem is, these garlic pizza twists just sounded so good and, dare I say it, easy. Not so! However, I won’t dissuade you from making them. I’ll just give you warnings and pointers.

Let the dough come to room temperature by taking it out of the fridge a half hour or hour before you begin the proceedings. Mix your sauce before you start worrying about the pizza dough. Combine tomato paste with garlic salt, minced garlic, fresh and dried herbs. (I used a variety of paste flavored with garlic and basil, just to get a little extra garlic in there. You know, for overkill.) Add 4 tablespoons of olive oil and mix together, then set aside.

Now for the dough. Oil your hands before removing each dough ball from its package, otherwise it will stick to you like white cat hair on a black sweater. Second, oil your baking sheet, where you’ll roll out your first rectangle, and then oil the work surface where you’ll roll out your second rectangle. I also oiled my rolling pin, for good measure. If that horrifies you, then ditch the rolling pin in favor of your hands.

Next, use a spatula to spread a very thin layer of tomato sauce to the very edge of the pizza dough that’s on the baking sheet. Don’t leave any border, as you would with pizza. (You’ll have a lot of sauce left over, but that is by design because your remaining tomato paste will become dipping sauce.) On top of the sauce, sprinkle 2 or 3 tablespoons of fresh chopped basil. If basil is in season or if you can get whole leaves, by all means use that. Next, sprinkle on a heaping 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese. Lastly, sprinkle a heaping cup of shredded mozzarella over that.

Very carefully lift up the rectangle of dough that you’ve rolled out on the counter — don’t worry, it will stay in one piece because pizza dough is very stretchy — and place it over the top of the dough and toppings on the baking sheet. See? It’s like a pizza sandwich at this point. Be prepared because the edges will not line up perfectly. My alignment was something of a disaster, but I forged on.

Use an oiled pizza cutter to cut the dough crosswise into one-inch strips. I got about nine strips out of my dough-sandwich. Now comes the crazy-making part: trying to twist each strip of slippery dough into your desired twisty shape. I experimented with several methods, working from the outside in, the inside out, twisting from both ends simultaneously or twisting from one end to the other. Every way I tried it was equally chaotic and fillings got everywhere.

The final step is to melt half a stick of butter with even more minced garlic, then brush it generously over each stick. Whatever butter remains, mix it with the rest of your tomato paste, along with a quarter-cup of water. Voila! Tangy tomato dipping sauce to accompany your warm pizza twists. I ended up cutting my pizza twists in half to make them more manageable, giving me 18 twists, which is really far too much. I will freeze them and give them to Dad. Twist and share (to repurpose the classic Beatles song).

I’m not kidding around with the garlic, here! If this amount of garlic is a bridge too far for you, I don’t blame you. But if you like garlic as much as I do, please come to my house and help me eat these garlic pizza twists.

Garlic Pizza Twists

• Two 15-ounce bags of fresh premade pizza dough
• One 6-ounce can of tomato paste
• 4 tablespoons olive oil, plus plenty of extra as needed
• 2-3 tablespoons of fresh chopped basil
• 1 teaspoon each fresh chopped oregano and rosemary
• 1 teaspoon dried Italian spice blend
• ½ teaspoon garlic salt
• 6-8 cloves of fresh minced garlic, divided in half
• ½ cup shredded Parmesan cheese
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• ¼ cup (half a stick) of melted butter
• ¼ cup water

Let dough come to room temperature. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix tomato paste, fresh and dried herbs, garlic salt, 3-4 cloves fresh minced garlic and 4 tablespoons olive oil. Set aside. Oil a large baking sheet. Oil your hands and place one package of dough on the baking sheet. Roll or shape with hands into a large rectangle shape (does not need to be exact). Spread tomato paste to edges of dough in a thin later. Top with basil and both kinds of cheese. Next, roll or use your hands to work the remaining package of dough into a rectangle shape on clean, oiled surface. Place the second rectangle of dough atop the first rectangle, making a sort of pizza sandwich. Use an oiled pizza cutter to slice crosswise into one-inch strips. Twist each strip (both layers of dough and fillings). (This will probably not go well but aim for rustic instead of perfection.) Melt the butter with remaining minced garlic and brush over pizza twists. Pour remaining butter and ¼ cup water into tomato paste and blend well to make dipping sauce; set aside. Bake the twists for 20 minutes or until golden. Cool slightly and serve warm with dipping sauce.