Garlic Cheese Bread Sticks

I looked at my fridge the other day and i saw this big ziploc bag that has leftovers levain from last week when i made sourdough bread . I don’t really like wasting food , and especially during this time when it is so hard to find flour anyway . And obviously i had made too much levain , i’d normally use this to make pizza . But we did too much cooking and baking the past couple weeks and pizza into the diet is just not a good idea at the moment .

But i caved in , i didn’t end up making pizza , but my family loves garlic cheese bread sticks . You know , the type you can get when you order pizza from pizza hut , or domino’s , any pizza chain place . I got the idea from there , all it was just bread topped with garlic and mozzarella cheese , how hard can it be ?

So , i made that last night , i just used whatever levain i had left , i didn’t bother to measure it , but it’s probably around 100 to 125 grams , so i warned my family , this bread sticks probably will have a more sour flavor due to the sourdough starter . I just mixed it with a little warm water , i cheated with a little dry yeast , i obviously needed the help of the yeast to speed up the process , nothing wrong with it . And then i added kosher salt , and that’s pretty much it . Salt , water , levain , all purpose flour and little yeast . I am very happy with how this turns out though , when you buy it from pizza chain place , they always end up soaked with grease , from the butter , i don’t know why they find the need to use that much butter . Just from brushing it with butter i only used 2 tbsp of unsalted butter and my parchment paper is basically pretty cleaned by the time it was finished baking .

I did not follow any recipe , i did not measure , it was just throwing ingredients here and there unfortunately , and i did not use the mixer either . Used my hand as a guide if it’s too wet then add more flour and work from there . So this recipe is probably not for those of you who never baked before . Maybe next time i will try to measure the ingredients .

Ingredients :

• Leftovers levain , if you don’t have leftover sourdough levain , it’s fine , this is actually quite optional
• active dry yeast
• kosher salt
• warm water
• all purpose flour

Directions :

Literally just mix all ingredients together and start mixing it with hands , or mixer , or wooden spoon . If the dough is too wet , then add little more flour while keep kneading it . The dough needs to be kneaded for a good 5-6 minutes , should clean the side of the bowl , i then would take it out and started kneading it on my kitchen counter until it’s smooth . You can always test with window pane test to see if the gluten has developed . Then left it rise for about an hour or so , until doubled in size , take it out , and i just used parchment paper to line my small cookie sheet and started flatten out the dough to match the size of the pan , and then let it rise again for an hour . When it’s ready , i mixed couple tbsp of unsalted butter with salt and garlic powder to brush the dough , and then sprinkled it with mozzarella cheese . Bake at 375 F about 20 to 25 minutes ,rotate if you need to .