Breadsticks

I've been sick with a bad cold/flu this week and am still not feeling that great...I hate colds.  I thought I was feeling better yesterday, but I must have overdone it because this morning I had a bit of a rough start. 

But then I got with it and baked up four recipes of banana bread in muffins and small pans for Miguel and Micah to take to the sierra tomorrow.  Hopefully some of it will actually survive the trip so they can be used as host gifts!  I know how much Miguel loves his banana bread...Micah loves it, too, since the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree...

Since I had the oven already on and I made a big batch of spaghetti, I decided to make breadsticks as well.   I was expecting Micah to bring home two of his friends for a sleepover...but then Miguel called to say that the van broke down on him and the evening plans are now in question.  A friend was able to take a mechanic to where Miguel was and hopefully it will be an easy fix because this is a really bad time for our van to break down!  So I am really hoping that I will have a vehicle to use while Miguel is gone this week...

Anyway, I was disappointed they weren't making it for lunch because I tried out a new recipe for breadsticks and they are best warm from the oven...but oh well, the boys will still enjoy them whenever they get here.

I got the recipe from Allrecipes.com, which continues to be a favorite place for good recipes...I'm missing my regular cookbooks since they are packed away right now.  I also enjoy reading the comments and getting advice from others who have tried them. 

There was some debate in the comments about the dough being too soft and whether or not one needed to add more flour...in my opinion, you do need to either add more flour or reduce the liquid.  There is no way I could have kneaded or shaped the dough without having aded the extra flour.  But I did try not to add too much so that the dough would still be quite soft, reducing the chance of getting tough breadsticks out of it.  I spread out the dough with my hands, cut it up with a pizza cutter and I did twist them as well.

The recipe also wasn't very clear about the melted butter part...do you roll the sticks in the melted butter and then bake them in that same pan?  I decided to just grease the pan and follow the advice on one comment that merely brushed the tops with melted butter (which worked better anyway since the sticks were so soft they were a little hard to handle).  I added some garlic & spice mix to jazz it up a bit.  I left a few without, though, since not all of us are garlic fans. 

They turned out great and I'll definitely be making these again!