In episode 26 learn how to make best homemade gluten-free breadsticks recipe will make you forget those soft Olive Garden breadsticks ever existed! This easy recipe with a garlic butter topping is not only GF, but dairy-free as well! Join Melissa, gluten-free cookbook author, as she shares many easy, pro tips to make this audio recipe for gluten-free breadsticks, so good, you’ll be fooled into thinking they are traditional, pizzeria-style bread.

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Recipes and Resources Mentioned

Gluten-Free Breadsticks

Recommended Equipment

• Kitchen-Aid Stand Mixer
• Flex Edge Paddle Attachment
• Instant Read Thermometer (Thermoworks)

Recommended ingredients

• Psyllium Husk Powder
• Cup4Cup All Purpose Gluten-Free Flour
• Instant Rise Yeast
• King Arthur Measure-for-Measure

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Transcript

Hey everyone, I’m Melissa Erdelac, host of the Gluten Free Recipe Challenge podcast and creator behind the gluten free website MamaGourmand. Here we take beloved recipes you thought you never enjoy again and transform them into easy copycat versions just as good as the originals.

It’s been a while since I’ve indulged you in some gratuitous recipe praise, but this recipe in particular, I think it’s warranted.

I just really want you to understand, when I say these gluten free breadsticks are the shit, it’s not just me who thinks so.

Exhibit A, one person said, “These are quite possibly the tastiest breadsticks I’ve ever had, ever. Not just GF. I prefer these over the ones that we get from our regular pizza joints, Hungry Howies, Little Caesars, and our local best pizza place ever. They’re chewy, stretchy, but still fluffy.”

And, just one more, before you really start with the eye rolls, “This was the easiest recipe. ever, and I knew how good they were when my daughter said they reminded her of the one’s she ate as a child from the pizza place we frequented. She said she hasn’t had anything that good since she had to go gluten free.”

So, now that that has been established, you are probably wondering, what is it about this recipe that makes it so damn good?

Well, a couple things. First, they’re pretty quick and easy to make. You mix everything together. Pipe them on a baking sheet. Let them rise a few minutes and then bake. And I’ll get to the piping part in a bit.

Also, if you’re an OG fan, and for people not in the know, that’s short for Olive Garden, but full disclosure, I am not an OG fan because my Italian lineage would probably be revoked if I walked in there. But once upon a time… I did partake in a breadstick or two. And like those OG breadsticks, they are fluffy and soft, and they have a garlic butter topping on it that will remind you of the only thing worth eating at Olive Garden.

So they get their soft texture because I don’t really go overboard with the GF flour. But because there’s less flour, the dough is really soft, actually too soft to be able to shape it with your hands. It’s more like a thick batter. So what’s a girl to do? How can you still make breadsticks out of that?

That’s where the piping comes in. So you use a Ziploc bag, you dump the dough in, snip off the corner, and pipe it onto the baking sheet. It’s pretty genius.

Okay, so what do you need to make this recipe? You need three cups of gluten free all purpose flour, and for this I highly recommend the Cup4Cup gluten free flour, but I will say if you read through the comments on the recipe, people have used other flours with good results, um, people have used King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill. And that’s just what I remember off the top of my head, but you could check out the recipe comments.

Two tablespoons of sugar. One packet of Instant Rise Yeast. And if you don’t use instant rise yeast, then you’ll have to proof the yeast in the warm water first, but if you use instant yeast, you just throw it in with the dry ingredients.

A tablespoon of Psyllium Husk Powder, and if you’re wondering if you have to add the psyllium husk powder, technically, no. I’ve made these with and without the psyllium husk powder. It doesn’t affect the taste either way, but it does help give an extra boost of softness and elasticity. And also, as you check out the comments, some people said that they left the psyllium husk out and for them.

A teaspoon of baking powder. I add the baking powder because these have a really short rise time, so they just rest a little bit before baking, and then the rest of the rising comes in the oven that’s activated by the baking powder. A teaspoon of salt, one and a half cups of warm water, two eggs that should be room temperature, and then a fourth of a cup of olive oil.

And then for the parmesan topping, that is a little bit of melted butter with grated parmesan, garlic powder, kosher salt, and Italian seasoning. And I will circle back to that and tell you how you can make that dairy free .

So to make the recipe, you use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, and you mix together 3 cups of gluten free flour, two tablespoons of sugar, one packet of the instant rise yeast, one tablespoon of psyllium husk powder, one teaspoon of baking powder, and one teaspoon of salt.

Once that’s mixed together, then you add in the warm water, the eggs, and the olive oil, and then just mix that on low speed until the dough comes together, which takes about a minute. Then you’re going to increase the speed to medium, and you’re going to beat for five minutes, and you’ll probably want to scrape down the bowl halfway through.

And you just do this because it relaxes the gluten free starches so they’re not gritty, and then also aerates the batter. At this point, the batter will be slightly thick, kind of like a brownie batter. After that, line a baking sheet with parchment paper and then spray it with non stick cooking spray.

And this is when you’re going to put the batter in a Ziploc bag. To do this easily, I just put my Ziploc bag in a bowl and then I fold over the sides. So, it’s open, and then I just use a silicone spoon to scrape the dough into the bag, squeeze out the excess air, and then close the bag.

After that, you’re going to snip off a one inch corner of the bag, and the size of the corner actually makes a big difference.

One inch doesn’t seem that big, but if it’s bigger than that, when you pipe it out, the breadsticks are really large. It’s pretty deceiving. So you want to make sure you have a small opening so your breadsticks aren’t like massive when they pipe out.

Pipe out about six inch long breadsticks on the baking sheet, and you can pipe them out about two inches apart. Then you just let that pan sit in a warm, draft free place to rise, for about 15 minutes, which, conveniently, is about the time that it takes to preheat your oven and preheat it to 375.

Then you just bake them. They only take 15 to 17 minutes and you want to bake them until the bottoms are lightly browned. With gluten free bread recipes, I always check the internal temperature of the bread because a lot of times it looks done on the outside and then you will check the temperature and it’s not the right temperature, meaning it’s not done all the way.

And that’s how you get those like gummy, dense results. I use an instant read thermometer and I’ll link to my favorite one. It reads in like one second. You’re looking for an internal temperature of 190 to 200.

While the breadsticks are baking, that’s when you mix together the garlic butter ingredients. Melt the butter, put the cheese and the seasonings in, and then when they come out of the oven, then you immediately brush it with the topping.

They’re best if they’re served right away. They’re best served warm, but if you want to store them, then cool them completely on a wire rack before storing, and you could wrap them up individually in plastic wrap, put them in a Ziploc freezer bag, and freeze them, and then you could take them out when you’re ready to enjoy them, and I would just thaw them first so they won’t take long to thaw, and then warm them briefly In the microwave, wrap them up with a paper towel and just warm ’em for about 10 to 15 seconds.

A couple other things that I wanna address is making the breadsticks dairy free. So the dough itself is dairy free as long as you use a different flour than Cup4Cup because Cup4Cup does contain milk powder. The next flour that I would recommend for dairy free would be the King Arthur Measure-for-Measure , and for the garlic topping, you can omit the Parmesan cheese, or some people use nutritional yeast instead of Parmesan cheese.

And then just substitute olive oil for the melted butter. Or you can use for that buttery flavor, just use, plant-based dairy-free butter sticks.

And then about the stand mixer. So I use the stand mixer just because it makes the dough easier to handle. This makes, even though it’s a thinner dough, it’s thick and you have to beat it for a long time.

So you will find if you use a hand mixer, the dough is really going to get stuck in those attachments. And the paddle attachment just does a better job. It’s easier, you don’t have to work as hard, and since this uses a larger amount of flour, it will be more taxing on your hand mixer and yourself.

So if you don’t have a stand mixer, and you make a lot of gluten free baked products, I would highly recommend investing in one. Um, you could probably find… Cheaper ones off of like Facebook Marketplace or eBay if you don’t want to spend as much as a new one is.

So remember you can always find the full printable recipe on the show notes page and to get to it click on the link provided in whatever podcast app you’re listening on or you could go to my recipe website which is mamagourmand.Com and click on the podcast tab and there you’ll find the full recipe along with any recommended ingredients or equipment I’ve mentioned.

The post Episode 26 Miraculously Soft Gluten-Free Breadsticks appeared first on MamaGourmand.