No need to go to Olive Garden for these breadsticks.
Olive Garden breadsticks: the definition of endless refills with an Italian salad. Here’s how you can make a reasonable amount of them at home (even though it’s not endless).
Olive Garden breadsticks start with garlic bread, turned into longer, thinner bread stick shapes which are covered in garlic, herb butter, and crispy on the outside.
Here’s how to make that at home:
Preparing the Dough
Preparing your dough starts with the yeast. With warm water and yeast, mix both until the yeast becomes foamy and bubbly. No matter if you have Active Dry versus Instant, you can make breadsticks with both. Here’s how to use them.
Instant vs Active Dry Yeast
Note: when it says “warm water”, this means 100F.
- Active Dry Yeast: This is the classic yeast, and the one we use in our recipe. As its name suggests, you have to activate it in the warm water. This is the blooming process, where the carbon dioxide is bubbling, activating or aliving the yeast.
- Instant Yeast: This is a more modern yeast that does not need activation. Instead, add to the dry ingredients and mix well into the recipe. However, with the blooming step, the yeast dissolves the sugar completely which can be an issue with instant yeast.
After the yeast is activated, start with the dry ingredients in a bowl. This is the flour, salt, and sugar. Then, in an even larger bowl, add the liquids: melted butter and water, and slowly add the dry ingredient mixture until it gets into a more cohesive and sticky dough.
For this recipe, I did a double proof.
How to Shape Your Dough into Breadsticks
Once the dough has risen once, take the dough out of the bowl and begin to roll it out. First, separate the dough into 10 to 12 equal pieces, then roll it out into long rectangles. Place these rectangles on an oiled sheet or laid on parchment paper.
Let these proof again, then these should be expanded and ready to put into the oven.
Baking the Breadsticks
Preheat your oven to 400F. Before the breadsticks officially go into the oven, prepare a garlic, butter mixture to put on top of the breadsticks. This is where most of the flavor comes in for the breadsticks.
Start with melted butter, garlic powder, and parsley. Add these to a small bowl, and brush these on top of the bread before putting it into the oven.
After 12 to 14 minutes, take these out of the oven and brush the mixture again. Make sure the breadsticks are hot when you do this, it’ll help stick onto the breadsticks more.
