On those rare occasions when we do decide to cook something in my apartment it's pretty basic. Not only is my stove on the miniature side, Matt got all of our good spices and cookware when we had to split our belongings up (don't feel bad for me, I got the TV and the bed.) This particular day we were both in the mood for a light meal. It was about 4 o'clock on a Sunday, and if you know anything about Pacific Grove then you know that this means any type of cafe or coffee shop where we would get the type of thing we were looking for would be closed (we actually found this out the hard way once which ended with us at McDonald's.) This time around however we decided to go to Trader Joe's. Matt and I love TJ's, it's where most of our weekly supplies come from. They provide a nice balance of ready-made and frozen foods. There aren't a lot of different brands to choose from, but that's O.K with me because I could really care less which of the 15 brands of whole grain rice I end up with.
Wondering though the frozen food section we spotted scallops wrapped in maple glazed bacon (!) and some BBQ chicken skewers. What a perfect combo for a light meal! But something was missing, and those somethings were my beloved carbohydrates. Matt wanted biscuits which I personally though disrupted the flow of the whole 'light meal' thing, and I wasn't providing any better suggestions so we were stumped. That's when we saw the pizza dough. TJ's has 3 types of pizza dough: plain, garlic herb and whole wheat and Matt and I are no strangers to it (stay tuned!) That's when it hit me, we should make bread sticks! So here it is, my guide to making semi-homemade bread sticks, maybe one day we'll actually make the dough:
The thing about TJ's pizza dough is that it's really sticky. To prepare we use a generous amount of flour on our really tiny cutting board (just so you can feel sorry for us, this cutting board is the exact same size as the amount of counter space we had in our Berkeley apartment, I kid you not!) and I flour up my hands so that the dough wont stick to them (learned that the hard way...)
After the dough (for these we chose the garlic herb) is finally out of the plastic bag, lay it out on the well floured cutting board. Douse the rolling pin in flour and roll the dough out so that it is the thickness you desire. I have no pictures of the rolling...but I do have a picture of the aftermath. Behold,
After the dough is all rolled out, cut it into strips. I decided to use the pizza cutter because it seemed easier than my knife (and it was!)
You'll need an even number of strips but i t doesn't really matter if there is an even or odd number after this initial cut because you can always cut one in half and make a smaller stick. It is also a good idea to get the strips you'll be matching to be relatively close in size. Now comes the hard part. I didn't really think through the whole keeping the cheese between the strips while twisting thing, so it took a bit of trial and error to get it to work. What works in the end is to sprinkle cheese on each piece (we chose the 4 Italian cheese blend.) Since the matching strips are likely next to each other, I pinch the touching sides of the strips together. Then fold one strip over so that the cheese is sandwiched between the two dough strips and pinch all the remaining edges down so there is a little dough pillow filled with cheese. This makes it so much easier to twist the dough. We wanted ours to be extra twisty so that's what we did.
Never one to be left out, Maddie wanted to help. Although really, I think she was more hoping for a piece of falling cheese than anything else. That, or she just wanted attention.
Once all of the sticks are constructed and twisted to your desired amount of twist, drizzle some olive oil over the sticks. We used a silicon brush to brush the olive oil on. After this sprinkle a bit more cheese on top. No worries if there is extra cheese on the pan, cheese crisps (especially Parmesan!) are delicious, hence why the sprinkling extra cheese on the top.
See how tiny that baking sheet is!? That's the size of my whole oven! Now the sticks are ready to be baked. I don't remember what we baked them at, I think it was 350, nor do I remember how long, but I am a firm believer in 'you know your oven so figure it out.' What I will say is, they are done when the tops are golden and the cheese on the outside is crispy but not burnt. They should come out looking like these
When all is said and done enjoy your meal!
But of course don't forget to share...
yum and so creative!
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