Cheese Sticks

These are mostly bread and seeds if done right on.  They use egg for a binder for the seeds but you can do olive oil instead although I believe the egg is nicer and it isn't dominant.  It is just one egg, OR you can use just whites (2-3) and save the yolks for something else, for all of them.

These fall under the "A little bad for you" category only because cheese when it becomes crispy is pretty broken protein.  Melted it is okay with just the casomorphins being the only exciters in it as long as it is WHOLE milk cheese and not radically aged. Aged cheeses (harder cheeses like asiago, pecorino, parmesan) have a lot more casomorphins - the stuff that makes you overeat cheese.  It is very hard to find really good cheese (cheese that doesn't rely on it high content of casomorphins or rely on artificial/"natural" flavorings- not already present in the cheese) Low fat cheeses and skim milk cheeses being absolutely terrible.  Better to have the small amounts of whole milk cheese aged forever than to have fresh skim milk cheese.  The process by which cheese is made is a process of breaking the protein.  But like most things the closer you are to the source and the closer the control you have the better off you are.

So for this I used sharp raw milk cheddar from Greenbank farms (Preston, WA -find local cheeses near you!) at present it just relies on the cheese tasting good as is and they don't screw with it and a small amount of it goes A LONG way. Also for vegetarians, Greenbank uses vegetable rennet.  No matter what size chunk of cheese I buy it is best to chop it up immediately into shared dinner portions (for the entire meal not to be monopolized by any one person).  I'll have one chunk for an entire large pizza a little chunk for burritos and so on... often getting several meals spaced over the course of weeks for a cheesed meal here and there.

You can get nuts and use something IN place of the cheese on these as well.  The basic bread is vegan.  You can roll it that way with your own spin using a spicy pepper center or a cinnamon filling.

Ingredients:

• 2 slightly heaping Cups unbleached white flour (you can do a whole wheat version by doing 50/50 or 75/25 whole wheat -white but adding a touch more yeast to help the heavier whole wheat rise well)
• 1/2 Cup whole wheat flour
•  1 package of yeast or 1 heaping tsp  (adding a touch more yeast if doing more whole wheat than white wheat so it will help the heavier wheat rise well)
• 1 Cup warm water (you may need a standby 1/4 - 1/2 Cup warm water for later when mixing)
• 1 tsp vegan sugar or granulated
• 1-2 TBSP olive oil
• 1 tsp or more of each favorite herb if dried,  Unless your herbs are especially potent then cut in half -1 TBSP of each if fresh
• (basil, oregano, sage, rosemary, thyme nearly anything)
• 1/2 tsp salt

• flaxseed
• poppyseed
• cheddar cheese

approx. 12 large cheese sticks

Method:

Add yeast to warm water until frothy (5-10 minutes)

Add all dry ingredients to each other and finger sift/stir.  Add water/yeast and stir into a silky ball adding water as needed.  Olive oil a bowl and drop dough into it.



Let the dough rise for 15 minutes, max - too much longer and the dough which is still trying to rise while you work it will become unruly, you want the dough to be "young" and not too puffy or with too much elasticity as you'll need to work with the dough through a few steps to form the twists and with that time throughout the manipulation it will continue to mature and puff. So effecient quick moves and not too much nit picking.

Take the still young dough place onto a floured surface, flouring top slightly working in a little flour and then roll out trying to work it into a rectangle of about 3/4 of an inch in height.  Cut down the middle with the back of a knife or a bread cutter.  Take to a non-porous surface and coat top sides in  well beaten egg (or your replacement), beat just enough to break the white from keeping the egg bound.  Cover tops well leaving plenty for the other sides.

 Cover one egged side with flaxseed, and the other egged side with poppyseed.

After well covered in seeds flip over letting seed sides lay on surface and coat the "bottom" not top sides in your remaining egg (or your replacement).  Take your cheese that you've portioned out and grate it.  Cover one of the top egged only sides in the cheese to get coverage you like, too much cheese and it just spills out and wastes during cooking.  So some "holes" in the coverage are fine it works out in the end.

Preheat oven to 400.

Once cheese is on, flip other dough egged only side touching the cheese so the two sandwich the cheese in the middle.

From the top view of the dough find the center with the dough vertically oriented and cut horizontally in half.  Then cut each half into six pieces.  I goofed on the first set and had one giant one when it could have been two.  This recipe will make 12 large cheese sticks.

Place each piece after two twists (or more if you're a master and don't spill cheese) on a lightly olive oiled baking sheet (really not much oil is needed at all, and once oiled it is good for both batches and doesn't need another coat).

Bake each set at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes until golden.

Serve straight from the oven when possible.  Watch as your family thinks you are a genius.  Oh, and you are.