It is time for Sunday Slow Bakers. We are a group of bakers from Slow Travel who are baking and blogging together each Sunday. The group was organized by Krista and this is our third bake.

This week’s selectionis a savory item – Babbo’s Breadsticks. I had my doubts about it since I’ve only had the hard cellophane-wrapped breadsticks. Would it be worth the effort? G had a company party to go to Saturday and signed us up for cheese and crackers. The breadsticks would be great to take along with the cheese so I decided to do them on Saturday.

I tried to find 00 flour but no luck in my area. I tried Trader Joe’s and Central Market and neither store carried it. But I did find an locally grown and milled flour by Stone Buhr. The flour comes from Shepard’s Grain , an alliance of family farms who have been certified as “environmentally and socially responsible” by Food Alliance. I think that is so cool that I can find socially responsible local flour here in my grocery store.

The recipe went together easily. I was surprised by the recipe including a 1/2 tsp of cayenne pepper. These may have a little spiciness. I don’t have a standing mixer to knead the dough so I blended the ingredients and then turned them out onto a floured sheet and hand kneaded them for 5 minutes. The dough handled similar to pizza dough.

Our house is cool so for good measure I warmed a bit of water in a large soup pot and laid a cake rack on top to warm the dough. I placed the towel covered bowl on top the warm pan and left it to raise.

After the dough doubled in size, I punched it down and cut the dough into 1 inch pieces. It took a little bit for me to get the hang of hand rolling the dough into foot long pencil thin strands of dough. I’d always end up with one section really narrow. But the dough is really forgiving and you can push it back together and re-roll it out.

The instructions were to bake at 375 degrees for 12-14 minutes. I had to bake for almost 20 minutes to get them lightly golden in my oven.

They were golden and crispy. The tangy salt with the peppery bite was addictive. G and I ate several right out of the oven. I placed them in a large pint glass and took them to the party. They were definitely attention grabbers and were gobbled up.

Here are a few of the other bloggers results:

• Destination Anywhere
• In and Out of the Gardens
• Jerry’s Thoughts, Musings and Rants!
• Old Shoes – New Trip
• Palmabella’s Passions
• Whistlestop Cafe Cooking

Next week: Grappa-soaked mini sponge cakes