Domino's Pizza
Domino's Garlic and Herb Dip Copycat Recipe
The most requested copycat dip in Britain. Four minutes, six ingredients, and two decisions that most versions get wrong.
How to Make Pizza Express Dough Balls at Home
Dough Balls and Garlic Butter, the Cheapest Restaurant Starter There Is
The starter that has been on a British menu since the 1960s, for about a tenth of the price.
AI-generated illustration created for food.fast. It is not photographic evidence of a prepared batch.
Dough balls have been on the Pizza Express menu since the 1960s and they are, in cost terms, one of the most profitable items any restaurant sells: a small quantity of basic bread dough and a pat of butter, for seven pounds.
At home they cost about forty pence for twelve and they are genuinely better, because a dough ball is at its best four minutes out of the oven and the restaurant's have been sitting in a warming drawer.
The two things to get right are size and colour. They should be walnut-sized - about 30 g - and they should come out pale gold, not brown. A browned dough ball has a crust, and the whole point of the thing is that it has almost none: a thin skin over an entirely soft, steamy middle.
How this page shows its working
The method gives quantities, timings and observable cues rather than asking you to guess. The 4 cases in If it goes wrong explain likely causes and corrective action.
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Hot and fast, which is how you get pale and soft
It sounds backwards. A hot oven usually means more colour, not less.
The logic is about time. A small ball of dough at 220 °C is cooked through in about fourteen minutes, and in that time the surface does not have long enough to develop much Maillard browning. The same ball at 180 °C takes twenty-two minutes, and over those extra eight minutes the surface dries out and browns properly.
So the hot oven is actually the gentler treatment, because it gets the inside cooked before the outside has time to become a crust.
The other half of it is crowding the dish. Bake them touching each other in a small tin or an ovenproof dish rather than spaced out on a tray. Where they touch they cannot brown at all, and they hold each other's steam in - which is why you pull them apart rather than pick them up.
Brush with oil before baking, not butter. Butter browns; oil does not.
How to make it, step by step
The dough
-
Mix and knead for eight minutes
Everything except the salt, rested ten minutes, then the salt in and kneaded until smooth and elastic.
About 18 min -
Rise for sixty minutes until doubled
Covered bowl somewhere warm. It should double in volume and a finger pressed into it should leave a dent that fills back in slowly. In a cold kitchen give it ninety minutes rather than rushing the shaping.
About 1 hr -
Divide into twelve 30 g balls and roll each one tight
Roll each under a cupped palm on an unfloured patch of worktop until the surface is smooth and taut. The tension is what makes them dome rather than spread.
TipUnfloured. A floured surface gives the dough nothing to grip and it will just slide around.About 8 min -
Into the dish, touching, and prove thirty minutes
Arrange them so they are just touching. They will rise into each other, which is the point.
About 30 min
Bake and butter
-
Brush with oil and bake at 220 °C / 200 °C fan / gas 7 for 14 minutes
They should be barely golden on top and completely pale where they touch. If they are browning at ten minutes, the oven is too hot.
About 14 min -
Beat the butter while they bake
Softened butter beaten hard with a fork until pale and fluffy, then the garlic, parsley, lemon and seasoning beaten through.
About 4 min -
Serve them hot with a cold pat of butter in the middle
Straight from the oven into a warm dish with the butter in the centre, where it melts into the gaps. Pull them apart rather than cutting them.
About 1 min
Freezing them, which is what makes this worth doing
Shape the balls, arrange them in the dish, cover and freeze unbaked. Once solid, transfer to a bag - three months.
To bake from frozen: into the dish, covered, and leave at room temperature for two hours to thaw and prove. Then bake as written.
This is the version worth having, because dough balls take twenty minutes of work and fourteen minutes of baking, and splitting those apart means the work happens on a Sunday and the baking happens when somebody wants them.
The garlic butter also freezes as a log for three months. Together, the two frozen components mean a restaurant starter in twenty minutes with no work.
What twelve cost against a restaurant portion
| Component | Amount | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Bread flour | 300 g | £0.32 |
| Yeast, sugar, salt, oil | - | £0.12 |
| Butter | 100 g | £0.28 |
| Garlic and parsley | - | £0.06 |
| Twelve at home | £0.78 | |
| One restaurant portion of eight | £6.95 |
Ways to change it once you have made it once
Stuffed with mozzarella
A 1 cm cube of low-moisture mozzarella pressed into the centre of each ball before rolling. Seal carefully or it escapes.
With a cheese and herb crust
Brush with oil and sprinkle with grated parmesan and dried oregano before baking. No longer pale, and very good.
Air fryer
180 °C for 9 minutes, in a single layer. Works well and they brown slightly more than in an oven.
What went wrong, and how to fix it
Each entry names a likely cause as well as a correction, so the advice remains useful when equipment, ingredients or batch size differ.
They came out brown and crusty
- Why it happened
- Oven too cool and baked too long, or brushed with butter.
- What to do
- 220 °C for 14 minutes, brushed with oil. Hot and fast keeps them pale.
They spread instead of doming
- Why it happened
- Not rolled tight enough, or rolled on a floured surface.
- What to do
- Roll on an unfloured patch under a cupped palm until the surface is taut.
Dense and heavy
- Why it happened
- Under-proved, or the dough was over-floured during kneading.
- What to do
- Full hour for the first rise and thirty minutes in the dish. Resist adding flour to a sticky dough.
The garlic butter is greasy rather than fluffy
- Why it happened
- The butter was melted or partly melted rather than softened.
- What to do
- Soft enough to dent with a finger, no softer, and beaten hard before anything else goes in.
Questions people actually ask about this recipe
Why are dough balls pale rather than golden?
They are baked hot and fast and crowded together, so the surface never has time to brown. That is the texture - a thin skin over a soft middle.
Can I make the dough ahead?
Yes. Shape the balls and freeze them unbaked for up to three months. Thaw and prove for two hours, then bake as written.
Melted or soft garlic butter?
Soft. It is served as a cold pat that melts into the hot bread, which is better than butter that has already melted.
How big should they be?
About 30 g each - walnut-sized. Twelve from 300 g of flour.
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