Pesto Bread Sticks

Another bread recipe 🙂 This time, in the form of delicious bread sticks. A few weeks ago, I posted a recipe of Walnut Pesto. I had made a large quantity, to try and use up the abundance of basil in my freezer. I froze much of that pesto into individual servings. With guests coming over for a pasta dinner (recipe tomorrow), I like to serve a homemade bread. I decided that it would be  a perfect opportunity to make bread-sticks using some of the pesto.

Bread-sticks bring about another childhood memory for me. My father used to randomly suggest we go to a nearby pizza restaurant (his favorite one) and have dinner. We ALWAYS order the same thing. Two orders of Parmesan Bread sticks and one medium pizza is plain with just cheese and sauce and one medium pizza with onions, mushrooms and bell peppers…..olives, if we were feeling fancy. Yup, that is our standard order with varying drinks. I loved the bread-sticks, especially dipped with marinara. It was one of my favorite memories of those dinners.

The only thing I would mention about this recipe is to watch the bake timing. If you are making thick bread-sticks, the bake time will be increased and thin bread-stick, lowered. Mine ended up a tad over cooked for my tastes.

Pesto Bread Sticks

Ingredients:

1 cup of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of active dry yeast

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 tablespoon of olive oil

warm water

Pesto

Parmesan cheese

Directions:

1. Combine flour, yeast, salt and olive oil.
2. Add enough water, so that a ball is formed (not too sticky or dry)
3. Knead until dough is soft and elastic and then let it rest in a greased bowl, covered, for 1 hour
4. Roll out dough into a rectangle about 1/2 inch thick.
5. Spread pesto and sprinkle parmesan cheese over dough, leaving short edges of the rectangle clean
6. Fold dough in half, joining together clean edges of the short sides of the rectangle
7. Cut dough into 1 inch strips and after twisting each strip, place them onto a baking tray
8. Let dough rise for 30 minutes to 1 hour.
9. Preheat oven to 375 F
10. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until bread-sticks are light golden brown

Serve with Pizza Sauce or Marinara Sauce