February 14th, 2011 | Food Facts, Our Food, artisan, bacteria, cheese, cheesemaker, craft, culture, handmade, micro-organisms, terroir, traditional, Wisconsin
This is a really fantastic post, by Jeanne Carpenter regarding a conference she attended about cheese. Jeanne runs her company, Wisconsin Cheese Originals, and promotes the state's artisan cheeses. I really appreciated the love these cheesemakers have for their bacteria, it is amazing what delicious things happen when people work with micro-organisms. If only we could all really start to see our world like this and not all be so terrified of germs and whatnot. Lovely photo from www.cheesebyhand.com website of the Oakvale Cave.
Bacteria Farmers
Read the full article here.
At a conference last week discussing how to differentiate Wisconsin cheese through "taste of place" (the U.S. version of French "terroir"), I heard quite possibly the best description that could ever be given to a cheesemaker.
Bacteria farmer.
The title rolled off the tongue of Ivan Larcher, a French cheesemaker and consultant, who via Skype from France, provided a 45-minute talk encouraging raw milk cheesemakers interested in crafting cheeses that reflect the flavors of their farms to also start cultivating their own starter cultures.
"Every farm is a unique microbial ecosystem, evolving with seasons and agricultural activity," Larcher says. "If you pasteurize the milk, you destroy the bacteria and then you have to work harder to recover the flavor. So I encourage you to think of yourself as a bacteria farmer - concentrate on farming your bacteria just as much as farming your land."
In Wisconsin, the majority of cheesemakers purchase starter cultures from commercial "culture houses" - think of it as a mail-order catalog where if you want to make Cheddar, you buy a starter culture for Cheddar, or if you want to make Swiss, you buy a starter culture for Swiss. But in Europe, many cheesemakers have cultivated their own starter cultures, using bacteria from their own land, and have then passed these starter cultures down through generations of cheesemakers (similar to the starter cultures used to make sourdough bread).
“I am a firm believer that what is in the air, the water and the earth in your particular area greatly influences the flavor of cheese. The minerals in the earth are in the grass that’s eaten by the cow, and we take her milk and make it into cheese, and that taste progresses from the ground to the consumer,” Chris said.
Read the whole article here.
This is a really fantastic post, by Jeanne Carpenter regarding a conference she attended about cheese. Jeanne runs her company, Wisconsin Cheese Originals, and promotes the state’s artisan cheeses. I really appreciated the love these cheesemakers have for their bacteria, it is amazing what delicious things happen when people work with micro-organisms. If only we could all really start to see our world like this and not all be so terrified of germs and whatnot. Lovely photo from www.cheesebyhand.com website of the Oakvale Cave.
February 13th, 2011
I got a lovely, delicate handmade necklace and earring combo in exchange for sending this Teya Danel of Dangles Jewellery a SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) so she could start making her own kombucha. She lives out on Vancouver Island and makes very cool jewellery. Please send her a n ...
December 7th, 2010
I started making these aprons because I have a couple of very wonderful mothers, both my own and my mother-in-law, who are always providing me with a steady stream of material that are indigenous, handwoven or from some far away land with beautiful original designs. Some of these lovely material ...
November 22nd, 2009
I was given a special treat this year for my birthday--lunch out at the Sha Lin Noodle House in Vancouver, BC. They don't take reservations so we crowded into the doorway to get out of the rain and hovered hungrily over the nearest table, the wait wasn't long and we were soon seated with a great vie ...
August 15th, 2009
Last month I got a great email in my inbox from Out of The Box Sampler inviting me to share a sample for their monthly box. This was great news and I started trying to figure out what in the world I could make 25 of that wasn't gonna take me a whole month, but that would also be a sample of the item ...
