How to Make Homemade Soft Breadsticks with Video Tutorial
Do you love soft breadsticks, those like you find at Olive Garden? This homemade soft breadstick recipe tastes just like the Olive Garden breadsticks, but you can enjoy them at home anytime.
We love to have breadsticks with soups and salads. We also love the breadsticks from Olive Garden but we don’t eat there that often. When you have a craving for those yummy soft garlic breadsticks, like the ones at Olive Garden you can make them at home with this recipe.
If you haven’t ever made bread dough from scratch this recipe might at first seem difficult. But each of the steps is really quite easy to do.
If you follow the step by step video and the tips below, you’ll end up with wonderful garlic breadsticks. The printable recipe is below too.
If your family loves breadsticks, you might consider making a double batch. If you have extras they will freeze very well. It’s better to have too many than not enough.
Tips for Making Soft Breadsticks from Scratch
✳︎ Warm your water but don’t get it too hot. You want the water to be about 100-120 degrees. Just a little above body temperature. If it’s too hot it will kill the yeast and your breadstick won’t rise.
✳︎ To flavor, the dough uses Italian seasoning or this recipe for pizza seasoning works well too.
✳︎ Humidity or lack of humidity can affect how much flour you need to add to the dough. If it’s a rainy day you may need more flour and if it’s a dry day you may need less.
✳︎ Gauge how much flour you need by the feel of the dough if it’s too sticky add a little more flour, but don’t add too much so the dough becomes dry.
✳︎ Knead the dough until the dough is smooth and elastic. It should take about 10-15 minutes to get to the right texture. Be sure to add a sprinkle of flour now and then to keep the dough from sticking to surface you’re kneading on.
✳︎ Let the dough rise in a warm place until double. I like to put my oven on warm and let it warm up while I’m kneading the dough. Then I turn off the oven so it doesn’t get too warm and place the dough to rise in the warm oven.
✳︎ Shape the breadsticks fairly thin, they will double in size as they rise.
✳︎ After baking and while still hot, brush with melted butter and sprinkle with coarse salt.
How to Make Homemade Soft Breadsticks with Video Tutorial
Ingredients
Instructions
- Mix the warm water with the yeast and a pinch of sugar. Set the yeast aside to proof about 10 minutes.
- While the yeast is proofing, measure half the flour with the rest of the ingredients, except the oil, and mix in a large mixing bowl.
- Add the proofed yeast and oil to the flour mixture. Stir until to combine and whip until the dough falls in sheets. This step can be done with a mixer or by hand.
- Add more flour a half cup at a time and mix into the dough by hand until the dough isn’t sticky.
- Knead the dough for 10-15 minutes or until smooth.
- Place the dough in a greased bowl and let it rise for an hour or until doubled in size.
- Punch down the dough and divide into 16-18 pieces.
- Roll the pieces of dough into thin sticks, and place on a greased or lined baking sheet.
- Let rise in a warm place until doubled in size.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake the breadsticks that have risen for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
- Remove from oven and while still hot, brush the breadsticks with melted butter and sprinkle with coarse salt.
While making yeast bread dough does take quite a few steps, none of them are very hard or too time-consuming. Most of the time for this recipe is spent waiting for the dough to rise.
I hope you and your family enjoy this soft garlic breadstick recipe as much as our family does.
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Those breadsticks look great! I’ve never heard of adding extra gluten to a recipe…where do you buy that?
Are you referring to “vital wheat gluten”?
Gina, yes, vital wheat gluten.
Erin, I get my gluten in the bulk foods at Winco. You add 1T gluten to each cup of flour to make it into bread flour which is higher in gluten.
Ok…I knew bread flour made better bread because of the higher gluten content, but I didn’t know that you could buy gluten separately and make your own bread flour. Thanks for letting me know that…I will have to see if I can find it around here 🙂
If you have a store that sells bulk foods you might be able to find it there or a local health food store might have it. I find for certain recipes it really makes a difference in how the bread turns out.
Hello Shelly,can you tell me how many ml of water are there in the jug ? Thank you !
Arleta, it’s one cup of water which is 237 ml. I hope that is what you were looking for.
Very nice. How to make the dough a day or two early and bake on the day like thanksgiving? Can you please tell me how?
Raj,
You could make the dough the night before, cover it and place it in the refrigerator. Then you can shape and let the breadsticks rise the next day. I hope that helps.
I haven’t baked these yet as they are rising right now but the smell is already wonderful. I have an allergy to corn so end up cooking from scratch almost exclusively especially breads because commercially baked ones usually include some corn derived ingredient. If this comes out half as good as it smells right now, it will make an awesome addition to dinner tonight to go with italian sausage stuffed bell peppers, and added to my recipe index. Thank you. I will be checking out the rest of your utube uploads and your webpage.
Charlotte
Charlotte, I hope the breadsticks turned out great for you.
Lovely recipe. How to make this a day or two early and bake on the day? Please let me know how.
Raj, you can make these a day before and once cooled but them in an airtight container and they should keep well until you are ready to serve them. I hope that helps.
What kind of flour do you use?
Carol, I use unbleached flour in this recipe.
Freezing: baked or unbaked? I’m trying to get some meals ready before an upcoming surgery and my family loves carbs!
Hannah,
I usually bake ours and then freeze. Be sure to fully cool them first before packaging them up. But you could freeze the dough if you’d like. Either way will work. I like to get all the work out of the way so when I need them I only have to thaw and reheat them. I hope that helps.
What kind of flour do you use?
I use unbleached all purpose flour or bread flour. I hope that helps.
Thank you Shelly! My bread is on its second rise right know. Can’t wait! Will make Alfredo pasta tonight!
Liz, How did your breadstick come out? I hope you they were delicious!
Hi Shelly, I did this recipe at least three times and it was wonderful. Bread stick was soft and delicious. I used all purpose flour and put in the oven as you said. Another time I put in the refrigerator and it wotked fine. Yesterday I did pasta and my husband asked where are the bread sticks hahahaha Family love them!! Thanks Shelly!!
Magda, I’m so glad you and your family liked the breadsticks. Thanks for letting me know, it made my day!