Archive for the ‘cheesemaking’ category
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From Isigny to Birmingham and the world
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
From the Normandy coast to the heart of England is a well-trodden path for Isigny Sainte-Mère’s cheesemakers. This time, though, the occasion was shared with cheesemakers from all around the globe at the World Cheese Awards. Birmingham has been an export destination for Normandy dairy products since the days when steam power first started supplying [...]
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Cutting mimolette: a hard cheese challenge
Monday, August 31st, 2009
How do you cut a hard cheese like mimolette safely and easily? For anyone behind a cheese counter, cutting veteran specimens of this cheese is at best an art, requiring a certain level of skill and dexterity. For a start, it requires a thick blade with a wedge profile to split the hard orange ball. [...]
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One Mimolette, up to two years
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
The first 15 days in the life of a Mimolette are vital to ensure it lasts the course. Since this cheese can be ripened for up to two years, it is hardly surprising that the cheesemakers and graders are very careful to follow the technical manual. Between the cheese mould to a special press, the [...]
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The Camembert legend (3)
Saturday, August 15th, 2009
The Camembert that Marie Harel made would not have had the familar white downy penicillin crust of a modern Camembert. That came later.In 1901, Normandy’s Camembert cheesemakers sought the advice of the Pasteur Insititute in Paris. The scientific answer came back to innoculate the Camemberts with the candidum strain of penicillin. This prevented the subsequent [...]
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The Camembert legend (1)
Thursday, August 13th, 2009
There are many legends that date back to the French revolution. However, few are as persistent as the story of Marie Harel and the origins of Camembert cheese.In 1791, religion was excised from the French state and priests were banned. Farmer’s wife Marie Harel sheltered a fugitive priest from Brie, even if she did not [...]
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How to ladle curds for Camemberts (2)
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009
The hot work of ladling curds into Camembert moulds demands skill and dedication, not to mention unflagging stamina to last a shift of heavy work. For years, cheesemakers had dreamed of automating this part of the process, but these dreams were unfulfilled. The 1983 AOC status for Camembert made in Normandy gave a new incentive [...]
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A few helpers for Mimolette…
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
At Sainte-Mère, the cheesemakers have millions of helpers working on the maturing Mimolette cheeses. As the cheeses ripen, so cheese mites feed on the fungi that develop naturally on the rind. The mites are completely harmless to humans. Their action develops little pits on the rind, which help to aerate the cheese. The cheeses need [...]
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Mimolette: a 17th century wartime initiative
Monday, July 27th, 2009
The round Mimolette cheese was an unlooked-for byproduct of hostilities between France and the Low Countries in the 17th century. The people of northern France were passionately attached to Dutch hard cheeses, such as mature Gouda, but these were no longer available while French and Dutch cannons were facing each other across the plains of [...]
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Keeping cheeses in shape
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
Why is a Mimolette cheese round? To be sure, it comes out of a spherical mould, but as a young cheese, these 3kg cheese balls would soon take on irregular shapes unless they were turned at frequent intervals by attentive cheesemakers. This means once a week while the cheeses are young and once a month [...]
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Médaillon: a new departure for Camembert
Wednesday, July 8th, 2009
In the late 1960s, the traditional Paris cheese and dairy shops (crémiers) were running out of space to hold two or three weeks’ worth of young Camembert cheeses and ripen them on the premises. So the Isigny cooperative found that sales were falling among their key customers. The cheesemakers’ solution was to develop a top [...]
