Grissini is the ultimate Italian snack!

As a child I used to pretend grissini were cigarettes and eat them as if I was smoking them. Something that can seem horrifying to most people nowadays buy hey those were the eighties!!

Grissini are often served in restaurants together with bread and are usually the first thing to disappear from the bread basket.

They are perfect with ham, cheese and nibbles for aperitif hour

Or they can simply be eaten on their own, something I do all the times!

Ingredients

• 200g discard liquid starter
• 85g strong white flour
• 5g salt
• 15g extravergin olive oil plus some extra for rolling
• A pinch of baking soda

I used all the discard in my discard jar, with included a 7 days, a 3 days and a 2 days discard. I just threw out the brown liquid at the top of the starter and gave what was left in the jar a good stir. I took discard jar out of the fridge about two hours before using it to let it come to room temperature.

Extra ingredients

• Mixed seeds
• Nigella seeds
• Maldon salt

I used a mix of the above when I rolled them out, but you can use anything you fancy. For example

• Chilli flakes
• Fennel seeds
• Poppy seeds
• Chia seeds

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and knead until you have a smooth ball.

Always knead using one hand only, so you have the other hand clean in case of need.

You should knead it until it comes off the side of bowl. If the dough is too wet and sticky:

• Clean your hand very well, using a scraper, if you have one, or rubbing it against your clean hand. Once clean the dough should not feel that sticky
• If it is still sticky, add a little bit of flour and knead a bit longer

2. When the dough is smooth and not too sticky, put it in a tray, give it a rectangular shape, cover and let it rest at room temperature for two hours

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During the two hours the dough will not rise but it will relax and it will be easy to shape the grissini.

3. After the two hours, pre-heat the oven at 220C Fan.

4. Pour a little bit of oil on a countertop and spread with a bit of the seeds mix.

5. Cut the dough in half and the start cutting out strips of dough using a knife or a dough cutter.

Try to cut similar quantities of dough

6. Shape the grissini either by gently rolling them on the oiled and seeded countertop or by gently swinging them with both your hands

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7. Put the shaped grissini on a baking tray covered with parchment paper

8. Put salt all over it and bake it for about 15 minutes

The baking time depends on how thick your grissini are. Mine were quite thin so 10/15 minutes were sufficient, but you might need to bake for longer if you have thicker ones.

My oven has a hot spot at the back, so I turned the tray around half way through the baking time.

I did not manage to fit all the grissini on one baking tray, sonI covered the remaining dough and set it aside while the first batch was in the oven. Once the first batch was baked, I cut out the remaining of the dough and made a second batch of grissini.

There it is a very easy and simple grissini recipe.

You can really let your imagination free with this recipe by adding spices in the dough and a variety of seeds on top.

And for those of you wondering, I did indeed stop pretending they are cigarettes, a long time ago in fact!

Enjoy baking it and let me know if you have any comments or questions!

If you want to make this recipe and share it on your social media please tag me using @prepandproperrecipes and the tag #prepandproperrecipes