Home › Pastry and Pies › Cheese Straws
Cheese Straws
Roll piecrust dough the same thickness as for pies. Cut in strips from six to ten inches wide and cut the strips into straws or sticks a quarter of an inch in width.
Lay upon baking sheets, leaving a space between the straws a third the width of the straws. Grate rich cheese, season to taste with salt and red pepper and scatter thickly over the straws and the spaces between them. Put in the oven where the greatest heat will be at the top and bake ten or fifteen minutes. Cut the cheese in the center of the spaces between the straws, remove from the baking sheet with a limber knife and pile tastily on a plate. - Emma P. Ewing.
An unusual approach to cheese straws: the cheese is scattered over the pastry strips and the gaps between them, so it melts into a lacy sheet that is cut apart while still hot. A few points make the method legible.
- Read the dimensions carefullyThe "strips from six to ten inches wide" become the length of the finished straws; the quarter-inch cuts run across them. Roll the dough about an eighth of an inch thick, as for a pie shell.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Cheese pastry of this thinness wants a hot oven, around 400-425F, on an upper rack so the cheese browns before the pastry dries out. "Where the greatest heat will be at the top" is the whole instruction on placement.
- Watch the clockTen to fifteen minutes is the original range. In a modern oven, start checking at seven or eight minutes; quarter-inch straws colour fast and turn bitter once the cheese scorches.
- Red pepperCayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. A scant quarter teaspoon for a full sheet is plenty; it is meant to prickle behind the cheese, not announce itself.
- "Rich cheese"Probably a sharp, well-aged cheese that grates to a powder: aged Cheddar, or Parmesan for a crisper result. Young supermarket Cheddar carries too much moisture and will pool rather than crisp.
- The hinge is cutting while hotThe melted cheese in the gaps sets into brittle wafer as it cools. Cut down the centre of each space the moment the sheet leaves the oven, then lift the straws off with a thin flexible spatula before they weld to the pan.
- Line the sheetNothing here prevents sticking. Parchment saves the straws and the fused cheese lace between them, which is worth keeping and eating.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantity of dough, so the yield depends entirely on how much pastry you roll out. They are best within a few hours; recrisp briefly in a warm oven if they soften.
Cheese straws belong to the late-Victorian savoury course, the small salty item served after the sweet or with wine, and English and American cookbooks of the 1880s and 1890s carry a variety of versions. Emma P. Ewing, whose name is attached here, was a cooking-school teacher and author active in that same period; contributed recipes signed by such instructors were a standard feature of compilation cookbooks like this one, lending the authority of a named professional to a household collection. What distinguishes her version is that the cheese is not worked into the dough, as in the more familiar method, but strewn over the top and across the gaps, so that the pan comes out as one sheet of pastry and browned cheese to be divided afterwards -- an economical trick that turns the spaces between the straws into edible wafer rather than wasted sheet.