The other day I had less than 2.5 hours of work hours left and more than 2.5 hours of meetings. Which meant, for something to do, I decided it was a great idea to make breadsticks. Start my dough before the meeting, let it rise, then bake it between the first and second meeting. Have bread to eat right around 3 PM.
You’ll be shocked that this is not, obviously, what happened.
I used this recipe from Cooking Classy, for Copycat Olive Garden breadsticks. I must start by saying that it makes the perfect amount of breadsticks. Another time I made breadsticks and I had a zillion breadsticks, a loaf of bread, a mini loaf of bread, and some rolls. Also, that recipe tries to escape my KitchenAid mixer bowl because it’s so big.
I mixed up the dough into a blob, transplanted the blob, realized I could use the dough itself to spread the vegetable oil around in the baking dish, flipped the dough over in the pan so both sides were lightly oily, and then started our new oven on proof to let the dough rise.
While my bread was proofing, I did the dishes so far–anyone else too impatient to wait for the sink to fill so you just wash your dishes inside the biggest of them?
After some amount of time, my dough had doubled in size as desired. So, I shut off the oven, left the dough in there to stay warm, and went off to my meeting.
Well. That was kind of a mistake, not that it made any real difference at the end of the day. Except, I returned to my dough to find–unsurprisingly in retrospect–there were some fairly dry bits along the outside of my dough. Whoops. I gave it another slight mix, then started forming it into vaguely breadstick-y shapes.
I think the dryness was why they look like… well, I don’t know what they look like? Not Olive Garden, that’s for sure.
Really, I can’t be that bad at shaping breadsticks, can I? I hope the baking process improves them.
This is the point where I discovered, no, I would not be having breadsticks before my 3 pm staff meeting, because they have to rise twice. I’m kind of wondering if I didn’t let my breadsticks rise twice in the past?
So I covered them with a towel and went off to my meeting.
I cannot visualize stuff. Of course, 90 minutes later when I returned from my meeting, the breadsticks are giant and I realize, “Oh, perhaps I should’ve made them half their size?”
Well, too late now and I am not waiting for a third rise. INTO THE OVEN THEY GO. Around the existence of fresh breadsticks, my mom is now making spaghetti for dinner. It turns out, unlike bread, they take like 9 or 11 or 13 minutes to bake. One of those.
Per the recipe, I brushed them with butter and sprinkled them with garlic salt (where I also had the realization garlic salt is literally just garlic powder and salt combined–sometimes I can be quite dumb that this is literally what is in the shaker/packet in our cupboard, so I did not mix it as the recipe told me to). I kind of wonder if I should’ve done the buttery loveliness beforehand for that nice golden colour, because again, mine did not look like the picture despite that for once I did follow the instructions, basically.
They tasted really good, but seriously do not look like the ones in the photo on the recipe website. I read now, like 48 hours later, to make them more golden they moved the oven rack up one. I feel like brushing with butter before or partway through baking would’ve helped with this, like isn’t that half the point other than, obviously, deliciousness?
…I mean, also, maybe the sticks would’ve been more nicely shaped had the dough not dried out and had I not been trying to bake breadsticks between meetings. But also, that’s probably exactly what you’re here for, isn’t it?
Anyways, my friend Kayleen said they look like mini-baguettes, so I’m going to go with that.
Also, who decided we eat garlic bread/breadsticks with spaghetti? Was one or the other not enough carbs? I like carbs though, so what do I care? Maybe I should change the tagline of this site to “definitely not a keto site”, except then I’m sure I’d get a bunch of people annoyed finding me that way in Google. (…Wait, maybe it’s worth it, then? Just kidding.)
Today is the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter, so I’ve made both cookies and a chocolate bunny pie. Seeing as nobody will have time to make these seasonal things inspired by this blog, we will see how long it takes for me to get to posting those–it will probably be extremely not seasonal anymore, but honestly, I didn’t actually use a chocolate bunny for the pie and the cookies just look like… spring? Again, this is an ADHD baking blog, this is probably what you’d expect. Seasonal will likely not be much of a thing around here, unless it’s the seasonal called “God damn the snow was almost gone in Winnipeg and then we got a bunch of snow on Thursday.”
Wait, I guess seasons don’t exist properly here, either. Carrying on.