Peppery Cheese Sticks

I encourage you to try these if you have any bread chops at all. You can easily make the dough in your breadmaking machine --you do have one of those, don't you? These breadsticks are tender and chewy-crunchy.

Course Bread

Cuisine Variable

Keyword yeast bread

Servings 48

Author Debi Simons

Ingredients

3 1/4 cups Flour Freshly-ground hard whole wheat is best then whole-wheat flour from the grocery store and then, last, regular or bread unbleached flour.
2 teaspoons instant yeast
1/4 cup olive oil Plus extra for brushing over the dough
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 teaspoons coarsely ground black pepper
1 cup water

Instructions

Put all ingredients into bread machine pan and set to go through quick dough cycle.. Otherwise you can use your stand mixer or knead by hand until smooth (maybe 5 minutes or so--it doesn't take much) and then let rise for half an hour or so.
Roll the dough, on a lightly oiled work surface, into a 10 x 18-inch rectangle. Cut the dough into strips 1/3" wide, 10" long. (Use a pizza cutter for the fastest results.) Place them on lightly oiled or parchment-lined baking sheets. Let the strips rise, covered, for about 30 minutes, until they look slightly puffy.
Bake the breadsticks in a preheated 375'F oven for 18 to 22 minutes, until they're golden brown, flipping them over halfway through. Remove them from the oven, and cool on a rack.

Recipe Notes

Yield depends on how thin you cut the the strips. Thinner sticks will bake up crisper, if you space them out on the baking sheet. This recipe is very adaptable. You can vary the cheese and seasonings to fit the rest of your menu—Parmesan plus perhaps some garlic and Italian seasoning for an Italian dinner, finely-grated Cheddar and some taco seasoning for a Mexican dinner, etc. Adapted from recipe originally printed in an issue of the King Arthur Flour product catalog.