Special Cheese and Walnut Sticks

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 4 sticks, you will need:

• 1 200 g Comté cheese
• 2 200 g small pieces of bacon
• 3 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 4 200 g walnut kernels
• 5 600 g bread dough
• 6 salt
• 7 pepper
• Total weight: 1,230 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
15 min.	2 hours 50 min.	50 min.	3 hours 55 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Cut 200 g Comté cheese into small dice and set aside.
2	Fry 200 g small pieces of bacon, add 2 tablespoons vinegar at the end of cooking and set aside.
3	Toast 200 g walnut kernels for 15 minutes in the oven at 360°F (180°C).
4	You can rub the walnuts in a teatowel when they come out of the oven to help remove the skins, but this is not essential.
5	Mix the walnuts, bacon and Comté together.
6	Mix these into 600 g bread dough. The simplest way is to knead with a food processor on slow speed. Note: For the best way to knead, see: A few tips for effective kneading at home.
7	Gather the dough into a ball, transfer to a large, clean bowl and cover with a plastic sheet. Leave to rest for 1 hour 30 minutes.
8	After this, weigh out the dough into lumps of about 300 g and shape into balls. Leave to rest for 20 minutes covered with a plastic sheet.
9	Next, roll the balls out into long sticks and lay in a baguette mould or tin. Leave to rest for 1 hour, covered with a plastic sheet as before.
10	Bake for about 20 to 30 minutes at 250°C (480°F) until the mini-baguettes are golden brown. Note: As when baking any bread, you should ensure that the oven is filled with steam for the first 15 minutes of baking. This page shows you how; it really is the secret of golden-brown, crusty loaves..
11	Served sliced as an aperitif snack, for example, success is guaranteed!

Remarks

If you do not have any Comté, try and use a similar kind of cheese, such as Gruyère or Emmental.
You will notice that the added goodies amount to nearly as much as the bread dough itself. This may seem a lot, but it is the secret that puts the "special" in a special bread.

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