Monday, February 24, 2014

Baking Bouchon - Recipe 85: Garlic Comte Breadsticks

What a tease!  The first thing the description of these breadsticks says is "Cheez-Its are one of Matthew's favorite crackers."  Matthew is one of the head bakers at Bouchon Bakery.  Supposedly, these are a better version of those.  I do not agree.


Not because these aren't good.  They have a great cheesy flavor and the added interest of garlic oil, but these are nothing like Cheez-Its.  Cheez-Its are the best cheese crackers in the world.  I'm not overstating.  Goldfish are good, but Cheez-Its are better.  Cheese Nips are not even to be considered.  Cheez-Its are where it's at.

These are not Cheez-Its for 3 reasons.
  1. They are not crispy enough to be crackers.  They are softer, like breadsticks which makes sense because that's what they are.
  2. I'm pretty sure they don't use Comte cheese in Cheez-Its.  Comte is a French Gruyere cheese so, yeah, not in real Cheez-Its.
  3. They're totally the wrong color.  They look like regular breadsticks and aren't even one bit orange.  I like my cheese crackers orange.
Despite the fact that these are not Cheez-Its, they're pretty tasty little sticks and not that difficult to make.

They're made like most of the other bread doughs using flour, salt, yeast and water that gets mixed together.  To that mixture you add melted Comte cheese and canola oil that's been cooked with garlic to flavor it.  All that gets kneaded together, allowed to rest for a few minutes and then rolled out into a large rectangle.  The dough is then frozen and cut into sticks.


Once the dough is cut, it proofs for a couple of hours and then gets baked.  I really wish I would have baked these longer.  I followed the instructions so I know I baked them for the appropriate amount of time, but I wish they have been crisper, like crackers (or Cheez-Its) because that is what I was expecting.  What I got were thin, soft breadsticks... not a bad thing, just not what I anticipated.

The garlic and cheese flavor does come through on these and they were very good.  CA took them to work and I think everyone there was relieved to receive treats that did not involve aggressive amounts of sugar.  I hope they enjoyed the break because it's all sugar all the time for a while.

Enjoy!
Julie

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