Like Olive Garden Breadsticks

You heard right!! Like Olive Garden!! Truly, it is true. So true, in fact, that I fell asleep early that night and woke up to my husband saying he had 5 when I was asleep. So, if you want these to last, you better hide them.=)

Here is where I got the recipe. I made the homemade version, but there is also a quick version. And I cut the salt for the topping to half of what it called for. Get some marinara and off you go!

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups very warm water
1 package active dry yeast (2 1/4 tsp.)
4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

2 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon salt

Garlic Butter topping:

1/2 stick unsalted butter

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon table salt

Directions:

In a large bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water and allow to sit for 10 minutes, covered. Mixture should be frothy.

While waiting, start preheating your oven to 200F degrees.

In the bowl of your stand mixer or medium-sized bowl, combine flour and salt. Add yeast mixture and melted butter to flour mixture.

Mix with dough hook attachment on stand mixer or stir with a wooden spoon
until fully combined.

Knead dough for a few minutes just until dough is smooth and elastic.

Spray baking sheet with nonstick spray.

Pull off pieces of dough and roll out into strips.

The first few times I made this, I pulled off way too much dough for each breadstick. So pull off smaller size pieces than you would think you'd need.

Remember these are going to double in size!

Cover the dough with plastic wrap sprayed with nonstick spray (so dough doesn't stick to it from the inside) and put in preheated oven for 45 minutes to an hour. At this point, turn off the oven. It is warm enough now for the dough to continue to rise.

Once they have doubled in size, remove sheet from oven and
preheat oven up to 400F degrees.

Once it has reached temperature, take plastic wrap off of breadsticks and put in the oven.

While they are baking, make butter topping.

Microwave butter until melted and add garlic powder and salt, stir until combined.

After 6 or 7 minutes, brush the bread sticks with half the butter mixture. Then continue to bake for another 6-7 minutes. Immediately upon removal from the oven, brush the other half of the butter on the sticks.

Allow them to cool for a minute or two, and enjoy!