Eggless Baking : Sundried Tomatoes & Cheddar Cheese Breadsticks

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.” 

- James Beard

It's been long time since I posted any bread recipe here but that doesn't mean I'm not making one. Buying a bread is a rare occasion in my home now, which is actually limited to occasional bagel purchase. I feel it's more easy to bake at home then try to figure out the ingredient list of store bought bread & making sense out of that list. Talking of ingredients, came across this link regarding subway bread few days back thought of sharing it, do check it & then wonder why in the world they have to put chemicals in the bread which are used in the making of yoga mats and shoe soles.

Coming back to today's recipe, needed something for after school snack so decided to make bread sticks. When it comes to any kinda bread I always want to try something new, so instead of using my regular recipe for the bread sticks, I googled & quickly decided to use this recipe as a base, from food network. It's a very easy and basic kind of recipe, I did twisted it a little bit, replacing some of all purpose flour with whole wheat flour is normal here in my bread baking. The addition of cheddar & sun dried tomatoes really worked very well here and we all loved it except the kindergartner. Here's my version of these Almost Famous Breadsticks.

What I used :

• 1 & 1/2 cup + 2 Tbsp. of  luke warm water
• 2 &1/4 tsp. active dry yeast
• 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 & 1/4 cup whole white wheat flour
• 2 Tbsp. melted butter(at room temp.)
• 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 2 tsp. salt

Add-ins :

• 1 & 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
• 1/2 tsp. of chilli flakes(dry red chilli seeds)
• 1 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes (I first soaked them in hot water for 10 minutes & then chop) 

For the Topping :

• 4 Tablespoon unsalted melted butter
• 1/2 tsp. sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp. garlic powder
• 3/4 tsp. dried oregano

What I did :

1. Place 1/2 cup of warm water in the bowl of mixer. Sprinkle yeast & sugar on top of it. Let it stand for 5-7 minutes.
2. Mix salt, whole wheat flour and all purpose flour nicely with fork/whisk in a separate bowl.
3. Yeast will start becoming foamy. Add flour and salt mixture, rest of the water, butter and oil to the yeast mixture.
4. On the medium speed knead the dough till it becomes smooth & soft, around 7-9 minutes.
5. Once the dough is smooth and soft add the cheese in 3-4 turns to the dough & mix it on slow speed.
6. Now, at this point I divided the dough into two parts. As I was not sure if kids will like the addition of sun dried tomatoes or not, so half of the dough was oiled & kept in a oiled bowl covered with the kitchen towel/plastic wrap for rise.
7. For second half of the dough slowly add(around 2 Tbsp. at a time) chopped sun dried tomatoes and red chilli flakes & let it mix at slow speed. Once the whole thing is mixed, oil this batch of the dough also and keep it in oiled bowl covered with kitchen towel/plastic wrap for rise.
8. It will take anywhere from 60-90 minutes until the dough gets double.
9. Prepare the baking sheet by lining them with parchment paper,
10. Once the dough is doubled slightly punch it, sprinkle some flour on the workspace. Take first batch/ball of dough & cut it into 16 equal pieces. I usually make a log cut into half & further cut the two logs into half & so on.
11. Now roll each piece of dough to 6-7 inches of log with around 3/4 inch thickness. Arrange them on the baking sheet around 2" apart. Finish rolling all the dough into bread sticks just like that.
12. Cover these rolled breadsticks with oiled plastic wrap & let them rise for another 30-45 minutes.
13. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
14. Melt the butter, brush it on the breadsticks & sprinkle them with 1/2 tsp. sea salt. There will be at least half of the butter left.  In the remaining butter add 1/4 tsp. kosher salt, garlic powder & oregano, keep it aside.
15. Bake until light golden color. Mine were done in 12-13 minutes.
16. Take them out, now brush rest of the melted butter(mixed with sea salt, oregano + garlic powder) on the baked bread sticks & bake for another 1 minute.
17. Cool them on wire rack. Serve with soup, pasta or simply marinara sauce.

Notes :

1. It's a big batch of dough and makes a lot of bread sticks. I made average size not too big kind and I got 32 bread sticks.
2. I reduced the qty. of salt in the dough as we were going to top the bread sticks also with the salt. And these were perfectly salted as per over taste.