Green Grissini Bread with Spinach

I don’t count the number of times I gave a “grissino” to my kids as a snack or even as a teething distraction when they were toddlers 🙂

Grissini are Italian breadsticks: long, crunchy, pencil-sized breadsticks. Such a simple recipe: water + flour + oil + pinch salt. And still, grissini are are one of my favorite Italian food. So basic and so delicious!

They are a fantastic snack for kids or appetizer for adults.

If you can make a pizza dough from scratch, well, you already know how to make grissini! The ingredients are exactly the same, you just need to learn how to shape them and it’s done 🙂

To give a twist to the recipe I decided to add some spinach: higher nutritional level and more fun for the kids 🙂

My kids’ favorite book is currently “Green Eggs and Ham” by Dr.Seuss, so I told them I used green eggs to prepare the grissini. LOL, you should have seen their faces. “Really, mom????!!!”

Of course, you can skip the spinach or substitute with other veggies or spices or herbs. But I really rally like the pale green of this batch of grissini.

As mentioned, the first half of the procedure is exactly the same of the pizza dough. (By the way, nothing can stop you from using this grissini spinach dough to make a pizza!!).

In a tall container add the luke warm water and the spinach. I used fresh baby spinach for the recipe as frozen ones would be too watery. If you need to use frozen ones, remove 4 Tbsp water from the suggested quantity.

Using an immersion blender puree everything. Add the instant yeast to the green water, mix and let it rest few minutes.

In a stand mixer add the green mix + extra virgin olive oil + sugar + half of the flour.

Let the stand mixer work for 3 minutes and than add the salt and slowly the remaining flour.

Let the mixer work for 12 min.

You will obtain a soft and quite sticky dough.

Grease your hands with some olive oil and remove the dough from the stand mixer.

Place the dough in a bowl previously greased with olive oil, cover with plastic paper and let it rest 20 min.

Important: cover with plastic or the surface of the dough will dry out.

You will see that the dough will raise almost doubling its size.

Gently remove the dough from the bowl.

With your hands (always greased with some olive oil) fold the dough on itself very gently few times and shape it like a long sausage.

Wrap in plastic paper greased with olive oil. I used the same one twice 🙂

Cover with a cloth and let it rest for one hour. The dough will double its size again.

Remove the cloth and gently remove part of the plastic. I didn’t remove it all at once as I didn’t want the dough to dry out on the surface. 

Cut a 1/2 inch slice of the dough. It will look like a small cylinder. 

Roll the cylinder in some semolina flour.

With your fingers gently stretch the cylinder into a long stick and place it on a baking sheet greased with some olive oil.

The best baking sheet for this recipe is the one with holes as it will let the air go through and cook the grissini evenly on each side making them nice and crispy.

Bake in preheated oven to 400F for 11/12 min.

Store the grissini on the countertop in a basket simply covered with a cotton cloth for up to 1 week. Don’t store them in an air tight container, they will get soggy. The drier they are, the crispier will get!