Garlic Bread Sticks

I eat a lot of pasta. I could easily live on pasta. I enjoy pasta so much that I've even had pasta for breakfast many times. Besides the combinations of noodles and sauces, the bread that goes with the pasta is very important. Different sauces and noodles go better with different sorts of bread, although any freshly baked bread will be just fine.

I love the bread sticks from Olive Garden, so I wanted to give one of the many recipes online which claim to be "just like the real thing!" a try. I got this recipe from The Country Cook. They are delicious and relatively easy to make.


Garlic Bread Sticks
1 1/2 cups very warm water
1 package active dry yeast 

4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, sotened

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon salt

Garlic Butter topping:

1/2 stick unsalted butter 

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon table salt

Proof the yeast in 1/4 cup of water with a bit of sugar until nice and foamy.

Place the sugar, salt, and butter in a bowl. My softened butter melted a bit, but that is okay!

Add the remaining 1 1/4 cup of warm water to the bowl of sugar, salt, and butter. Mix in one cup of flour.

Add the yeast and mix. Slowly add the remaining flour until a slightly sticky dough is formed.

Knead the dough until smooth.

Break the dough up into several pieces and roll these pieces into strips. The size and number of strips will depend on how many bread sticks you want and how big you want them.

Cover with a non-fuzzy towel and let rise until doubled in size.

While the dough is finishing it's rise time, preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bake the bread stick dough for 6 minutes. 

While the bread sticks are baking, melt the 1/2 stick of butter and mix it with the garlic powder and salt.

Remove the bread sticks from the oven and brush with the garlicy butter. Return bread sticks to the oven for an additional 6 minutes.


Remove the bread sticks from the oven and brush them with the garlicy butter yet again. 


Let cool for a few minutes and enjoy!

Quick Rolls

These rolls are quick to throw together... compared to the other dough that I have made. No kneading is required, so that is nice. You just mix up the ingredients, let it rise, make whatever shape of roll you want, and bake. The entire process still takes at least an hour and a half.

I didn't think these rolls had enough flavor, but other people absolutely loved them. Putting butter on them is a good idea. They would most likely go well with anything that tends to go well with bread or dinner rolls.

Quick Rolls

1 C milk

1/4 C sugar

1/4 C shortening or butter

1/4 C warm water

1 packet dry active yeast

1 egg, beaten

3 to 4 C flour, sifted

1 t salt

Scald the milk. Proof the yeast in the 1/4 C water (add 1/4 t sugar if you want).

Meanwhile, assemble the ingredients. Sift the flour into a bowl and put the butter/shortening, sugar, and salt into another bowl.

Pour the scalded milk into the bowl with the sugar. Stir until the butter/shortening melts almost completely. Let cool to lukewarm.

Add a cup or two of flour and stir until well mixed. Add the proofed yeast and stir.

Mix in enough flour to make a thick dough. This will take nearly 4 cups of flour and you may have to mix with your hands near the end.

Place the dough into an oiled bowl, cover with a non-fuzzy cloth, and let rise until 3 times the original size (around an hour or so).

Shape the dough into a roll shape. I greased two muffin pans and made cloverleaf rolls (place 3 small balls of dough in each cup).

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until lightly browned.

Enjoy!

A frog! (not a recipe)

Notice the lack of posts lately? Yeah, sorry about that. A lot of recipe failures and prepping for teaching in a few weeks hasn't really motivated me to type up recipes.

Until the next recipe... enjoy a few pictures of a cute little frog who lives in the pond outside. Click the images to view them in a nifty larger size.

Tomato Soup Fail

I made some tomato soup from the tomatoes that my mother grew. The recipe was for "creamy tomato soup". It was the worst tasting tomato soup that I have ever tasted. I won't be sharing the recipe here. I see no need to inflict that flavor upon anyone else, intentionally or not. Here is a picture of the soup. It looked much better than it tasted.

I made some rolls to go with the soup. Those turned out okay. I'll post that recipe later this week.

Grandma's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies

Finally! A new recipe! The delay in posting was caused by a few things. First, the power cord for my laptop decided to break in half. My laptop sadly does not operate on magic and needs electrons to function. Second, I picked up the textbooks that I will be using for teaching, so I've been busy over-preparing for the fall semester. The one book is just weird which makes the scheduling of what to teach when complicated.

Anyway...

These cookies aren't my grandma's sugar cookies, that is just the title of the recipe in the one cookbook. These cookies are very soft and they retain their softness. The sugary-ness isn't overwhelming, which is nice. You can frost these or just sprinkle them with sugar. I would try using a large crystal sugar and not a fine sugar like I used.

The recipe suggested rolling the dough out and cutting out cookies, but I just rolled the dough into balls and smushed them with a sugared glass. This recipe made around 5 dozen cookies. It will make more or less depending on what shape and size you want your cookies to be. The recipe was also lacking directions, so I'm not sure if I was supposed to let the milk mixture get sour before using it or not.

Grandma's Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies
2 C sugar
1 C shortening
2 eggs
1 t baking soda
1 t vinegar
Milk (almost 1 cup)
2 t baking powder
4-5 C flour

Cream together the shortening and sugar. I did this with a wooden spoon. Wooden spoons are the best kitchen utensil.

Add the eggs and mix until blended.

In a measuring cup, combine the baking soda and vinegar. Add enough milk to make 1 cup. Stir together. Slowly stir this into the sugar mixture. This will make it very thin.

Add 1 cup of flour to the mixture and stir. Add the baking powder and slowly add more flour, mixing between each addition. Add enough flour to make a soft dough. Near the end, you may need to mix by hand.

Roll the cookie dough into balls and press with a sugared glass. Or roll out the dough on a floured surface, sprinkle generously with sugar, lightly press in the sugar, and cut into shapes. Or anything else you can think of doing to make a cookie shape.

Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 6-10 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. The bottoms will start to brown, but the tops will not.

Cool for a minute and then remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy!