These easy homemade soft breadsticks are light and fluffy, topped off with melted butter and garlic salt for truly restaurant-quality breadsticks that you’ll soon be dying to serve alongside soups, stews, pasta, or salads!
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❤️ Why you'll love this recipe
- Using frozen bread dough cuts done on time and effort, making this recipe incredibly easy, even for beginners!
- You can reheat leftover breadsticks in the oven, wrapped in aluminum foil, and they’ll taste just as good as when you first made them.
- These copycat breadsticks taste just like the ones served at Olive Garden - seriously restaurant quality without the need to eat out!
🛒 Ingredients
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Note: The full list of this homemade breadsticks recipe ingredients with their amounts and options are listed in the recipe card below.
- Frozen bread dough - thawed
- Butter - melted
- Garlic salt
- Parmesan cheese - grated
- Italian seasoning - optional
🗒 Instructions
Note: This is an overview of the instructions. The full instructions are in the recipe card below.
- Divide the thawed dough into 16 equal pieces.
- Shape the dough into 7-inch long sticks.
- Allow the dough sticks to rise on a parchment paper lined baking sheet until doubled in size.
- Bake until golden and then brush melted butter on the breadsticks and sprinkle garlic salt.
- You can also sprinkle them with Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning at this point.
🔪 Equipment
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🤔 FAQs
These are questions we are often asked about our homemade breadsticks that taste even better than the Olive Garden's.
If your copycat Olive Garden breadsticks have hardened slightly from storage, simply wrap them in aluminum foil and heat them in the oven at 170℉ for up to 15 minutes.
If you’re trying to soften breadsticks bought directly from Olive Garden, simply follow the reheating instructions on the packaging.
Yes! Order unbaked breadsticks from Olive Garden directly from their website. Olive Garden and Amazon are also rumored to be entering into partnership in the near future.
Like most bread, these baked breadsticks are best stored at room temperature as refrigeration can dry out the bread, leaving you with stale breadsticks faster than if you stored them on your countertop.
Interestingly, Olive Garden’s breadsticks are actually vegan! They contain no eggs, butter, or cheese (either in the bread dough or added on top prior to baking). The restaurant-ordered breadsticks, therefore, have no butter brushed on the top.
👩🏻🍳 Tips
- While I only added melted butter and garlic salt to the top of the breadsticks, feel free to add your favorite dried herbs or even melted compound butter.
- Since this recipe calls for the use of store bought bread dough, you only need to wait for one rise (about 2 hours) but make sure that you do as this will result in light and fluffy breadsticks.
- If you want to make your own bread dough from scratch, use my Grissini Breadsticks recipe until you're ready to divide your dough, switching back to this recipe’s instructions.
📚 Variations
- Easily change the topping of these breadsticks with different seasoning, the use of dried herbs, and a different cheese like Provolone.
- Fennel seeds can be added as an extra topping ingredient.
- Convert this savory breadstick recipe into a sweet treat by omitting the garlic salt and rather sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top of the breadsticks with the melted butter (unsalted). You could even add a cream cheese glaze or vanilla sugar glaze and serve with a sweet dip.
🥫 Storage
Leftover copycat Olive Garden breadsticks can be stored at room temperature in a Ziploc bag or airtight container for up to 5-7 days.
You can also freeze them, wrapped, for 1-2 months to thaw at room temperature and reheat just prior to serving.
📗 Related Recipes
If you consider yourself somewhat of a bread addict then you’ll be excited to hear that there’s no shortage of bread recipes here for you. Consider trying Grissini Breadsticks, Parmesan Herb Pizza Bread, or Focaccia Pugliese. These are just a few to mention!
🍽 Serve with
Serve these easy homemade soft breadsticks alongside soups like my Copycat Outback Potato Soup, stews, a garden salad, or a comforting helping of your favorite pasta dish. And sometimes all you need is a delicious dunking sauce like our Homemade Cheesy Dipping Sauce to make a complete snack or appetizer.
Of course, these breadsticks also make delicious snacks and appetizers which you can enjoy with cheese dips and sauces such as marinara sauce. This Baked Goat Cheese Marinara Dip With Caramelized Onions would be amazing with these Olive Garden breadsticks!
What's new? Check out my All Our Way Store on Amazon. We'll be adding more items we love and use or wish we had to make cooking fun and easy.
📝 Recipe Card
These breadsticks are definitely a family favorite. You can make them ahead and freeze, although they are so simple you can bake plenty for the gang who will enjoy them thoroughly.
If you want a fabulous dip to scoop up with these breadsticks, you must try our Baked Goat Cheese Marinara Dip with Caramelized Onions. It's mouthwatering just talking about it.
Next time you're craving some soft delicious bread to snack on, try our German Soft Pretzel recipe that are best you've ever tasted!
If you love this recipe please give it 5 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.
📖 Recipe
Easy Soft Grissini - A Copycat Olive Garden Breadsticks Recipe
Ingredients
For The Breadsticks
- 1 pound Frozen bread dough thawed
For The Topping
- 3 Tablespoons Butter melted
- 2 teaspoons Garlic Salt may need more or less - it depends on you
- 3 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese grated - use as much as you like
- Italian seasoning this is optional - we like it.
Instructions
- Divide the thawed dough into 16 equal pieces.
- Shape the dough into 7-inch long sticks.
- Place the breadsticks on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Spray the parchment paper first with the vegetable oil spray before laying the breadsticks on the paper.
- Let rise in a warm spot until double in size (up to 2 hours.)
- Preheat oven to 400℉ degrees.
- Bake until crust is a light golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes. (Keep a close eye on them)
- Remove the homemade breadsticks from the oven and immediately brush breadsticks with melted butter and sprinkle with the garlic salt.
- Sprinkle them with the Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning if you like.
