Bread attempt two and Cheese Roundies.

I tried bread again! And again it was a disaster. I bought this lovely looking flour that claimed on the side to have a simple recipe for rye sourdough. 

I tried it, it looks wonderful, right?

But look carefully on the second picture and you will see a cut mark where I tried to saw a slice off. Too hard. At first, once you got into it, it was quite nice with butter, but the outside crust was too hard, then it just got hard and harder and I just chucked it away. You could use it as a weapon, I guess. 

So I then needed something savoury in the house that worked as a snack. Cheese straws are always brilliant (unless you burn them) so I decided to look for a recipe and make the pastry from scratch because I'm never comfortable using shop-bought pastries, they have loads of crap in them. So I found a recipe were the cheese is in the pastry before you  roll. 

200g mixed grated cheese (I had cheddar, parmesan and gruyere)

120g butter or margarine

250g plain flour

Pinch of cayenne

Sprinkle of rosemary

Sprinkle of salt

Cold water

You mix the cheese and butter together then add the dried ingredients, get your fingers in and work into a crumby mixture THEN add the cold water gradually, stirring in well with a fork until it forms a firm and unsticky dough. Then roll it out to the thickness of a cheese biscuit, and cut out the shapes. Greaseproof paper - tray, oven 190C/375F for 12-15 minutes.

And they were delicious. I also get annoyed with trying to get strips of pastry, it either comes apart or they are very uneven. I found a pastry cutter and did this:

What a brilliant idea. Mr keeps calling them cheese dollars ("Can you bring me five cheese dollars?" "You'll have four and be happy.").

It made loads but they lasted a matter of days. Because they haven't got added hydrogenated fat or whatever in them, they don't do terrible things to your insides.