Sunday, July 13, 2008

Cheesy Breadsticks

Matt requested cheesy bread to accompany our dinner tonight. Since he rarely has requests, I thought it best to comply forthwith. So I went to looking for a recipe. I was disappointed in the lack of cheesy bread recipes online! Almost everything I found called for canned biscuits or frozen pizza/roll dough.

So, I got out my trusty recipe collection and decided to create a cheesy variation of a fast bread stick recipe I got from a friend last year at a recipe swap. (Thanks Amy!) It worked so fabulously. I got one of the best compliments EVER from Matt. He said it made him think of something off of the food network (possibly a Diners, Drive-in, and Dives episode) where people say, "I come from miles away just for this bread". Yeah. It was good.

So, here's the recipe.

Easy Cheesy Breadsticks
Ingredients
1 Tbsp yeast
2 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt, plus some for sprinkling the top
1 1/2 C warm water (around 110*)
Approx. 3+ C BREAD flour (Trust me!! This makes a HUGE difference in the final texture of the bread!)

a little butter
a cup or two of cheese: I used mozzarella and cheddar inside and parmesan on top

Directions
  1. Pre-heat the oven to 400*
  2. Dissolve yeast and sugar in the water. (Don't add the salt in yet because at this point it can kill the yeast.) Let it sit about 5-10 min. to bloom.
  3. In a stand mixer (or by hand), knead in the 3 cups bread flour and salt. Mix for a couple min. The dough is a bit sticky with just 3 cups. At this point I took the dough out of my mixer and kneaded in about 1/4 cup more flour by hand, just enough to get it not sticky and to a point where you can roll it out. You can probably keep it in the mixer and add a little flour at a time until it pulls off of the side of the bowl.
  4. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a rectangle, approx. 15 X 12. Put this onto a greased cookie sheet or baking pan (I bet a pizza stone would work nicely too, though the cooking time would change a bit if you did that).
  5. Sprinkle the cheese over half the bread vertically, leaving about 1 in. on the edges cheese free.
  6. Fold the un-cheesed (short) side over the cheesed side and press the edges closed. You will have a long strombli/calzone like bread.
  7. Brush the top with some butter, grate as much parm cheese as you'd like, and sprinkle the top with kosher salt. I didn't let the dough rest or rise any more than the time it took me to fill it and get it ready for baking.
  8. Bake at 400* for about 15 min.
  9. Let it rest about 5-10 min. after pulling it out so the cheese doesn't just goo out everywhere when you cut it.
  10. Cut it into 1-2 in. strips and serve as a breadstick.
* Just so you know, this dough doesn't have any butter or oil in the dough. The means it doesn't keep as long. You can always add in 1-2 Tbsp of EVOO or canola oil if you find you don't eat it quickly enough before it spoils.*

4 comments:

Jodi Reeve said...

I think I will give it a try, sounds great!

-Laura- said...

Mmm...those sound really good right now.

Aron Blue said...

Thanks for this-- kept searching allrecipes and everything that came up either wanted me to use a bread machine or pre-made bread! I made these for a sunday football party and they were a huge hit! For the second batch, I kneaded about 5 cloves of crushed garlic and some parmesan cheese straight into the dough. They were AMAZING (if you love garlic LOL)

Celia Marie (W.) B. said...

Glad it worked out for you Aron! The garlic/parm addition sounds great.