Deep Fried Bread Sticks

A local restaurant sells these bread sticks that are delicious. In fact the bread sticks are on of the reasons main reasons that I go there. I have never seen bread sticks like that anywhere else. Well, I finally came to the conclusion that they are deep fried. So, I've been thinking that I should give a try at making them. But it sounded like a lot of work.

I had some left over dough sitting in my refrigerator from when i made my Ham and Cheese Hot Pockets the other day, so I thought I would try making deep fried bread sticks. I haven't worked with refrigerated dough much so I'm not sure what the correct procedure is for using it, but here is what I did. I took the dough out of the zippered bag that it was stored in and set it on the lightly floured counter top. I let it sit there for an hour or so to "warm up." 

After the dough had warmed up enough that I could work with it, I rolled it into a rectangle and sliced it into bread sticks using a pizza cutter. Then I cut each bread stick in half length-wise so that it would be about 5 or 6 inches long. (You could leave them long, but I wanted them to fit easily into the frying pan.) The dough was still cold, so I covered the bread sticks and let them sit for another 30 minutes.

At this point, I poured about an inch of canola oil into a frying pan and heated the oil over medium heat. To test if the oil was hot enough, I tore a small piece off of one of the bread sticks and tried cooking it. (If the oil is hot enough the bread will immediately rise to the top and began to puff out.) The oil was ready, so I put in one bread stick to test how long they needed to cook. THEY COOK VERY FAST! They only need to cook for about 10 seconds per side! Anything over 12 seconds and they start to over cook. So the method that I found to work the best for me was to add the bread sticks 3 at a time. By the time I added the last bread stick to the oil, the first one was ready to flip over. After they finished cooking on both sides, I removed them from the oil and put them on a plate covered with a couple of layers of paper towel to cool. We ate them while they were still warm. 

They turned out pretty good, but not quite like the restaurant's. I think next time I will use a dough that is a little bit sweeter. Also I might try brushing them with melted butter and sprinkling them with garlic powder and Parmesan cheese. 

My Tips

• The grease will splash and splatter when it is hot. Use care and keep kids away from it. (Okay, you already knew that.)
• Serve with marinara or pizza sauce for dipping. Garlic butter or ranch would also be great dipping sauces.
• You could probably freeze these, but I'm not sure if they would be as good after. A better solution would be to freeze your excess pizza dough. Kalyn over at Creative Savings talks about how to freeze pizza dough and how to use it.