Wisconsin is the France of America when it come to cheese. Wisconsin claims to make the best cheese in the US. It certainly makes the most. It's hard for a new cheese maker in Wisconsin to get the public's eye. I recently was given a package of "bread cheese." Is it made with bread? No, it's called bread cheese because after the cheese is made, it's baked in an oven till the outer sugars caramelize and it ends up looking like a piece of bread.
OK, bread cheese had my attention. Would it get my love? It's a Finnish cheese. A "squeaky" cheese which you're supposed to heat up till it glistens. I did that, but it was pretty tasteless. I don't remember if it squeaked. The label recommended serving it with jam, honey or nuts. It certainly needed something.
It was the ingredients label on the back that won me over. The label said the milk in this cheese was hand milked by Amish farmers and delivered to the cheese plant in chilled milk cans, "the old fashioned way." I hoped the cans were delivered by a horse drawn buggy but that might be a bit too old fashioned, especially in summer.
I tried another piece. Fantastic! I immediately ordered more. It's funny how knowing the milk was extracted by hand and put into a chilled can and not into an impersonal bulk tank made all the difference. There are several makers of bread cheese and I checked their ingredient labels to see if perhaps their milk was obtained by squeaky clean Amish milkmaids, or even by Amish milkmaids who only spoke German.It's a war zone out there in the pastures of Wisconsin.
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| I am often accused of telling stories, so here's bread cheese's provenance s'il vous plait . |
