Saturday 16 November 2013

Italian Breadsticks

The Great British Bake Off may have finished on television, but the Great Bloggers Bake Off is still going strong, and I'm so glad because I enjoyed taking part in the challenges so much.

Although the weekly challenges have finished, The Crazy Kitchen and Mummy Mishaps are continuing to host linkys for us to share our baking achievements, and this month we will be attempting bakes from the show that we didn't get chance to try out first time round.

So I decided to have a go at bread sticks. I'd seen a recipe in my Kenwood Chef recipe book, but without pictures I didn't feel confident enough to attempt it. Despite feeding my children bread sticks almost daily since they were six months old, I was imagining that the recipe would create large, puffy ones in the style favoured by Olive Garden restaurants in the States. Having watched the contestants bake bread sticks early on in the series, I decided that I wanted to give them a go.

After taking part in the original challenges, I was lucky enough to be sent various different ingredients to try out in my baking, so look out for those over the next couple of weeks. This week, I tried some Tesco Finest Bread Flour for my bread sticks.

Making Italian breadsticks

I used a recipe from my Kenwood Chef Recipe Book and you can find it online here - Kenwood Chef Recipes. It's a very simple recipe, and for once no purchasing of unusual ingredients was required! Making the dough was easy, but making the bread sticks themselves was a bit of a faff. I didn't have enough baking trays or space in the oven so I had to make them in two batches, and I got very bored of rolling out and shaping all those individual sticks - they would definitely not pass muster according to the strictly measured Bake Off rules!

Making Italian breadsticks

I was pleasantly surprised with my finished bread sticks. They make a nice 'snap' if you break them across one of the thinner bits, so really they needed to be thinner all over, but they are still tasty and would be nice for parties. But although I'm glad that I gave these a go, unlike some of my other Great Bloggers Bake Off bakes I don't think I'll be bothering with these again - far too fiddly!

I was sent the bag of Tesco flour to use in my baking

5 comments:

  1. I agree with you that breadsticks are too much of a faff - though people always seem to enjoy them when i serve them at parties. I'm hoping that when my kids get older, they will enjoy rolling out the dough, so that it can be a child entertainment activity, as well as a yummy nibble. Very good with dips like hummus.

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    1. They were very tasty! Perhaps next time I'd try and customise them a bit to make them more original, I also need to have a look at making my own dips for them.

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  2. Jennifer thesd look brillaint - seriously much more professional than mine, which are far to rustic and thick and more like actual bread-sticks! You did well with all the shaping and well done on the prize and thank you for your support x x

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    1. Thank you! I think I prefer thicker ones though, they are a bit more filling. But not sure I'll be attempting them again!

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  3. these look great & very Italian looking! I love my good grips bowl...& that red spatula is pretty fab too!

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