Wednesday 16 April 2014

The Great Swift Bake Off: 3. Breadsticks

This month the bake off coincided with the Easter holidays. With several colleagues away and others busy at the weekend it was a much reduced field that tackled bread sticks. I did manage a victory but the smaller number of entries diminishes the feeling somewhat!
My entry for this round was tomato and herb bread sticks (the tomato not only adds flavour but also a delightful orange hint to the sticks). I started with a basic bread stick recipe I acquired from my parents and modified the recipe to include flavours. The ingredients are as follows:
Batch 3? Too many sheets for our oven!

  • 500g Strong White Bread Flour
  • 250ml Water
  • 90ml Oil
  • 1 tbsp Sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp Salt
  • 1 tbsp Yeast
  • 1 tbsp Finely Chopped Rosemary
  • 100g Tomato Concentrate
  • Grated Parmesan to Decorate
Parmesan Failure. Enough Said.
The ingredients all went into the bread machine on a knead cycle (pizza dough works for us) before being kneaded again and rolled into a thin sheet (5mm thick). I used a chopstick for a guide and sliced strips off the sheet with a plastic dough scraper before rolling them slightly to round the edges and placing them on a teflon baking sheet. My slab of dough ended up too big for my sheets so I could cut my sticks to be identical lengths. 

After a 20 minute rise they went in the oven for 7 minutes at 180 Celsius before I sprinkled the grated parmesan over the top and returned to the oven (turned around to try and get an even bake) for a further 7 minutes. I started trying to put the parmesan on before baking but it didn't seem to stick very well! I could have used an egg glaze to try and get more to stick but I liked the unglazed finish.


Next month - Battle of the Victoria Sandwich: Revenge of the WI.