The dough btw was made (in my bread-maker) with 3/4 strong white bread flour and 1/4 cornmeal, largely because I have some cornmeal that needs using soon, but also because it gives a nice hint of gold to the end product. As I've had problems with bread rising of late I used a whole sachet of dried yeast, part of which was revived in some warm milk. It seemed to work well.
Forming the sticks was a challenge, but fun. It took me back to infant school days playing with plasticine, rolling a small ball into a sausage into a snake. As with those rather earlier efforts the final shape was less than even, but that (I hope) added a certain rustic charm to the snack.
The uncooked sticks were placed on a steel tray and left to rise for an hour or so, then put into the top of an oven just set to 220C (that is, they were put in a cool oven as it heated to 220C). I do that instead of putting bread in a pre-heated oven to give it a bit more rising. They took longer to bake than I had expected, almost as long as the sizeable bread rolls, so approaching 20 minutes, though I took the very thinnest out sooner, judging by their colour that they were done.
Sternest critic - my son - tried one and said less than flatteringly that he didn't believe I had made them. Crunchy, with a nice yeasty bread flavour, they were a winner, and I'll do more in future. On my austerity hobby-horse they were almost free, made from a scrap of dough that might have been binned otherwise (though I would probably have made a small roll for later use).
The picture shows the fatter models as the thin ones went almost instantly.
If anyone in the big-wide world can given me ideas about how to make them more even, and evenly thin to boot, I'd be grateful. I'm wondering if I could get some Parmesan to cling to the surface to add another dimension, but they were very good as they were.
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