Breadsticks

Thin sticks stretched rather than rolled, baked until they snap.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 500 g strong white flour
• 7 g dried yeast
• 300 ml warm water
• 60 ml olive oil
• 10 g salt
• 60 g fine semolina, for dusting

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, water, oil and salt and knead 10 minutes until smooth.
2. Prove 1 hour, then press the dough into an oiled rectangle about 2 cm thick, brush the top with oil, and prove another 45 minutes.
3. Dust the top heavily with semolina.
4. Cut strips about 1.5 cm wide across the short side with a sharp knife or a scraper.
5. STRETCH EACH STRIP, DO NOT ROLL IT. Pick it up by both ends and let its own weight pull it out to the length of the tray. Rolling compresses the dough and gives you a dense stick; stretching keeps the open crumb that makes it shatter rather than bend.
6. Lay them on trays with a finger's gap between, and do not prove them again.
7. Bake at 200C for 18 to 22 minutes, until evenly deep gold all the way to the middle. Pale breadsticks are soft breadsticks.
8. Cool on the tray. They keep a week in a tin and go soft in a bag.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes