bready bread breadsticks

so i've been going off lately making breadsticks...fresh, of course, and huge and doughy and awesome.  i made two batches on monday (parmesan and cracked pepper, sea salt and cracked pepper) that i was initially planning on sending out as xmas presents but i'm not sure they're gonna travel well and be good to eat in a week, so i'm probably going to scrap that idea.  see, every year, every damn year i get my boy mikey's address and i say i'm gonna send him a christmas present, and every damn year i fail to do so.  i feel stupid about it, although he's never mentioned it.  anyway, mikey my boy, i'm sorry i've once again let you down.

ANYway, now that the guilt has passed, check out my killer breadsticks!

they're fatties!  and super good!  here's the recipe:

take a packet of quick dissolve yeast and mix it with a cup of warm water, let sit for five minutes.  add between 2 and 1/2 and 3 cups of bread flour, a teaspoon and a quarter of salt, and mix until it becomes doughy...the extra half cup of flour may be needed to keep it from being too sticky.  flour up a counter and knead the bejaysus out of the dough for five, six minutes.  spray a bowl with cooking spray and put the doughball in the bowl and put it in a warm spot for about a half hour, or until doubled in size.  punch that sucker down and let it sit for a couple minutes.  turn it out onto the counter and roll it out until it's rectangle, maybe a foot and a half long by a foot wide.  brush it with an egg wash, and top it with damn near anything.  coarse salt and fresh cracked pepper are good first time choices.  then spritz it with cooking spray, and using a sheet of plastic wrap push the toppings into the dough. use a pizza cutter to cut it into twelve or fourteen strips.  take each strip and gently pull it and bounce it in the air until its around a foot long.  you don't have to, but i like to twist the strips to make them awesome looking.  spray your cookie sheets and arrange the breadsticks about an inch apart.  toss them into an oven preheated to 450 for ten to fifteen minutes or until they look done.  cool on racks.

boom.

breadsticks.