Wednesday: Let's go to bread sticks!

Have you ever made your own marinara? I do all the time. It's cheaper, easy, and I am under the impression that anytime that I make something from scratch it's bound to be far better for me. Today I am going to share with you my recipe for homemade pasta sauce, as well as my recipe for easy, ugly bread sticks. Let's go! 


First up: Marinara
Assemble ingredients: 


2 large (28 oz) cans of crushed tomatoes
1 small can (6 oz) of tomato paste
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
5 bay leaves
5 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 medium onion, minced
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp dried basil
salt  and pepper to taste


Dump all ingredients into a crock pot on high. This is the secret to great tasting sauce with a deep flavor. The sauce simmers all day without any stirring or effort on your part. The edges caramelize and just make it so so yummy. 


When your 6-8 hours are done, serve! Remember to dig out the bay leaves. I will admit that I usually leave them in there and we grab them out when we eat. Shame on me.  I usually freeze a good portion of this sauce, so I end up only having to make the whole recipe about every third time I make spaghetti. 

See how it looks burnt around the outside? It's not burnt. That's called FLAVOR! 


Now on to the easy, ugly bread sticks. You will understand why I call them that shortly. 


Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. 


Mix dry ingredients in a medium size bowl: 
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp sugar*
1 1/2 tps baking powder
1/2 tsp garlic salt 


Gradually add 2/3 cups milk of your choice to the dry ingredients. Mix to combine. You should have a fairly sticky dough-like substance. 

* I use a coconut milk substitute in my house that is like soy milk, but made from coconuts. I find this to be a little sweeter, so I usually omit the sugar. There's no yeast that needs it to feed on, so no harm done. 


Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a well floured surface. Pat out into a rectangle-ish shape. Use your judgement on how big to make it. You have to cut 12 bread sticks out of it. They do not have to be pretty, hence the name of the recipe! This step is just to make 12 equal portions of dough.