Grissini are a joy to eat and great fun to make. It is astonishing how much earthy flavour can be packed into their crusty form and, along with the flavour, comes the charm of eccentric shapes. More than anything else they resemble bones with a slender middle and knobbly ends. The master bakers of Turin are responsible for grissini and the trademark of real grissini is that they are stretched, shaken, or pulled into shape rather than being rolled. Not only would rolling be slower but rolling would run the risk of toughening the gluten and thus making them more rubbery to eat.
Grissini are an excellent accompaniment to dips and every type of antipasto, and stand on their own as a superb snack during the hours of the aperitivo. Older Italians would have them with coffee for breakfast.
- 500 gm white bread flour*
- 10 gm salt
- 15 gm fresh yeast
- Optional – 1 teaspoon malt syrup or honey
- 300 – 350 ml warm water
- 2 tablespoons olive oil (or butter or lard)
Make sure you are not working with a strong bread flour, which will be too elastic and tight to allow for the ease of stretching the grissini into their long and slender shapes. You can simply choose a weaker flour, or soften the bread flour by putting some plain flour into the flour portion of the recipe – about one-third should be suitable. I like to use stoneground white flour, which gives good flavour.
METHOD – to make 50 – 60
Mix the yeast and syrup / honey with the warm water. Put the salt in the flour, add them to the water, then set about a thorough kneading.
When the water has gone into the flour properly and you have homogeneous dough, add the oil or fat, and keep at it until you have a supple dough. It should be a stretchy, glutenous dough that is soft, not firm.
By shaping and patting the dough, form it into a rectangle which is about three times as long as it is wide, being about one and a half centimetres high.
Lay it on a board that has been thoroughly dusted with semolina and flour. Brush its top with oil and then sprinkle it with semolina before covering it carefully with plastic and cloths.
It will only need one proof and may have puffed up to full proof within a couple of hours, perhaps longer if it is cold. It will look very puffy and soggy, with a pock-marked surface, and will have spread outwards on every side
Making them is simple and quick. You must achieve a boldness in your movements. Divide the dough into quarters and separate them without knocking the gas out.
A quarter will yield 12 to 15 grissini cut neatly off the end of the block with a bench scraper or large knife used in a single downward chopping motion. Each chopped piece will be nearly the size of an index finger.
Now begins the fun as you pick up each finger in both hands and tease its ends apart until you have a slender stick to fit the length or width of your baking trays. If you tug at it as though pulling a Christmas cracker it might snap, so a better action is to shake and tease it as you stretch the ends apart.
Place them on oiled or papered baking trays at least half an inch apart. They will benefit from about one-quarter to half an hour’s proof, which enables them to relax so that they do not distort when they are placed in the oven. Further, they will puff up a little, so that any flatness occurring when they are pulled is transformed into a more attractive cylindrical shape in their cross-section.
Avoid a hot oven, which will scorch them. They need a very dull oven so that they are dried out inside by the time their crust is coloured. This enables them to be thoroughly crunchy with no doughy (moist) patches at their thicker ends.
At 170-180 C, they will take about 15 minutes, perhaps even more if they are on thick trays. For a crunchier result they could be transferred from the tray onto a hot tile or baking stone placed lower in the dull oven for their last 5 minutes.
Cool on racks.
