Food with My Dude #15: Almost-Famous Breadsticks

Hi! How are we doing this week?

After Stephen’s adventurous attempts to make his own pizza dough a couple of months back, [in case you missed it, you can find it here] he then wanted to make homemade breadsticks.

So, here are the ingredients we used based on the recipe we found on Food Network’s website:

For the dough:

• 1 package active dry yeast
• 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour + more for dusting [actually, we had to use at least 2 more cups of flour]
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon fine salt

For the topping:

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• Pinch of dried oregano

Price:

Since we had almost all these ingredients in our pantry, it hardly cost us a thing to make this!

First thing we did was put some water in a bowl and let the dry yeast bubble up and look like the picture below.

That took about five minutes or so.

The first initial amount of flour turned out be like 18.0625. I’d say we had it pretty spot on with the measurement the first time. However, as we let the mixer do its thing for a couple of minutes, but it didn’t create the lump of dough that you usually see.

After a few minutes, Stephen started to fume and half considered just scraping the dough and call it quits because it was so sticky. It wasn’t holding together like it should, but was just clinging to the counter. As you can see, we didn’t do that. Instead, he slowly added more flour to get the dough to not be like this sticky glob that you see below.

Yeah, we aren’t sure what happened because we did measure out the flour and everything correctly, so it was a bit annoying that it started to stick to the counter or to our fingers.

Fast forward putting the dough back in the mixer, adding a couple more cups of flour, it finally started looking a little bit more up to its standard.

He started to mold the dough a bit better, then he formed it into this funny log looking shape. Then to make them into somewhat smaller sizes, he started cutting up the pieces to make them smaller.

Now that they are somewhat smaller, he formed them into the breadstick shape. Now that I think about it, these would’ve been such cute little rolls to binge on.

Yeaaaah, our shaping needs improvement, hah. They definitely do not appear like breadsticks; but hey, first try, so that’s what matters!

We had to cover them with a [clean] dish towel for about 45 minutes or so for them to rise. Can you tell? They look a bit more puffy and better formed, slightly.

Then, we basted the buttery mixture on the breadsticks before we baked them for about 15-20 minutes.

We could only bake one pan at a time in our oven. They may not look done, but I promise, they are!

I just had to steal one off the pan to taste for myself! So fluffy, and what else can I say? Definitely some wholesome and fresh bread!

This is what we ended up with: waaaay more bread than two people can should eat within a couple of days.

Look how yummy they actually look! Haha. Now if we can just manage to get them to look a little neater, we’re one step closer!

Taste: Overall, I was pleased with how they turned out. I would love to have more of seasoning mix on them to give them a stronger flavor. I don’t think Stephen liked the Kosher salt. He said it reminded him of pretzels since that’s what they use. He did eat a few of them, but we’ll tweak that detail the next time.

Rating:

As mentioned, I wish these would’ve had a stronger garlic taste because they kind of tasted like a regular roll. I guess that bread form is pretty valid since it’s somewhat part of that family, haha. You know what I mean.

Spice level:

0. That would be a bit strange, right?

Anyways, lots of trial and error for this recipe, but they didn’t turn out so bad after all! We’ll probably experiment more in the future – maybe use a different recipe, too. Who knows. The possibility is endless!

Question: Have you ever tried making your own bread? Any tips for us the next time around?

Hope you all have a wonderful week!