Here is Chris’s recipe for simple grissini. It works beautifully at any time of year, but this December we are serving ours wrapped in thin slices of smoked speck, with olives, roasted nuts, and dips for a Christmas canape.

It lends itself well to gatherings of all sizes, and it’s easy to scale up to make and store the grissini in advance, you just have to bake them in batches. You can also bag them up for homemade presents.

We use our organic No. 4 for these along with our organic semolina .

Makes approximately 2 baking trays of grissini.  

Ingredients:

• Bread flour - 300g
• Warm milk - 135g
• Butter - 45g
• Yeast (dried) - 4g
• Olive oil - 10g
• Salt - 7g

You will need extra flour for dusting and extra olive oil for brushing.

Additional ingredients:

• Semolina flour, for rolling the grissini in.
• You could also sprinkle seeds, finely grated Parmesan, or finely chopped rosemary on top for variations.

Serving option: wrapped in smoked speck or Parma ham, and alongside dips, olives and nuts.

Method:  

Weigh the flour, milk, butter, yeast, olive oil and salt into a bowl, combine, and bring together.

Turn out and knead for 10 minutes. Place back in the bowl, cover and bulk prove for 1 hour in a warm place.

Turn out the dough on to a lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out into a rectangle the size of an A4 piece of paper.

Brush with olive oil. (If you’re sprinkling seeds, cheese or rosemary on top then do so at this point.) Then, using a knife or scraper cut the dough into thin strips of 5-10mm wide.

Roll each strip in semolina, then stretch each one lengthways to form your grissini and place on a lined baking tray with space between them. You can also twist them when stretching.

Prove for 30-45 minutes and then bake in a preheated oven at 160C for 12- 15 minutes until golden and dried out. Allow to cool.

These will keep for up to a week stored in an airtight container in a cool dry place.

To serve, wrap thin slices of speck or Parma ham around the grissini just before eating.