Hello everyone!
Welcome back for Week 20! We are still in the Biscuits and Cookies chapter, and the recipe this week was for Cheese Straws! As far as I was able to tell from the description, cheese straws are meant to be small breadstick-like treats – yum!
Before we begin, I’d like to apologize for the unannounced two-week hiatus I’ve taken. I’ve been in a little bit of a funk lately, and I didn’t want it to reflect in my bakes, so I just took some time off. I’m ready to continue now, and I have a lot of fun recipes up my sleeves! My weekends at work have also changed, so the blogs will now be published anywhere between Friday – Sunday.
Alrighty, now that we’ve gotten those two points out of the way, let’s get to these cheese straws! Like the Dorchester Biscuits, it’s a very simple list of ingredients; flour, (softened) butter, cheddar, egg yolk, Parmesan. The first step is to rub the butter and flour with your fingers until they look like breadcrumbs. It’s been really hot here recently, so I do think my butter got a little too softened, and the mixture didn’t look like breadcrumbs, just a big butter and flour mess.
The next step is to mix in the cheddar and most of the egg yolk. I used pre-shredded cheddar, so the pieces were a little big, but the recipe doesn’t technically say that it should have been freshly grated.
Once the dough is complete, you chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes before forming it into the “straws.” You’re supposed to roll out the dough to be ¼ inch thick, and I guess I didn’t realize exactly how thick ¼ inch was, because I had to get out a ruler! Not to mention the fact that I had to re-roll it about three times to get it the right thickness. I also used my handy-dandy ruler to cut them at ¼ inch wide and 4 inches long. I’m anything if not stubborn and precise when it comes to these types of things.
After all the straws have been cut, you need to place them on your baking sheet. This in itself was a feat. When I tell you these things were delicate, I’m understating. They were breaking left and right! If one of them broke, I just smooshed the two ends back together while on the baking sheet. After transferring, you sprinkle them with Parmesan. To clarify, the recipe says to sprinkle generously with Parmesan, so you can bet I went to town!
The recipe tells you to bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. I started with 8 minutes, but it ended up being about 14 minutes when I thought they had reached that golden color. I said they were delicate before baking, but after baking? Holy COW were they even harder to handle! The recipe says you’ll get about 30 straws, but because most of mine broke into at least two pieces, I basically had somewhere around 50-60 small straws!
Overall, I’d give this recipe a 2.5/5. The dough was extremely easy to form, and the whole process didn’t really take too long. I, however, definitely didn’t enjoy the texture. For me, when I bit into one, it essentially just crumbled into a dry, cheddar-flavored, sawdust-y mess. They had good flavor if you could get past the texture, but these definitely weren’t for me. Most of my friends and coworkers liked them, though, so that’s why I gave it a 2.5 rating.
I would definitely try to make these again, possibly with firmer butter to help with the dough texture, and maybe try different flavors of cheese to add my own twist to it. If I can’t get the texture right though, these might be on the back-burner for me.
Definitely a soft win, but still a win! Like I said at the top, I’m back on the baking train and I’ll be moving on to a different chapter next week, so make sure to keep an eye on this site, the Instagram (@didibakethat.blog), or your email if you’re subscribed to get an update on whatever crazy bakes I conquer next!
That’s it for week 20, the Cheese Straws! Thank you for following along with me, and, again, if you have any questions, feel free to use the “Get in Touch” feature on my “About Me” page and subscribe to get updates on posts!
See you next week!
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