Meet the cheesemaker: Lin Bourdais

Remember I told you in my last post how we had the baguette from Normandy with cheese the same night? Well, it wasn't just any cheese: it was this cheese, a tomme from the same terroir as the baguette, i.e. Pays d'Auge in Normandy.

The notion of terroir is of supreme importance to the artisans we met that day. Erik the baker moved to the country to be closer to the wheat. He started using a small mill close to his bakery but the miller moved away. So for now he gets his flour from le Moulin de Persard in Western Normandy. When Manu realizes his project of growing and milling wheat for the bakery however, the full circle they both have been dreaming of all along will become reality.

(photo courtesy of our friends at Tree-Top Baking, along for the visit)

Lin Bourdais, 47, has been making organic cheese for 6 years at Bois Canon, the farm he bought from his parents. He has thirty cows who produce milk all-year round on 52 ha (128 acres) of land. He sells his cheese on two open-air markets (Mézidon and Caen) as well as to a few natural food stores and to CSA's.  This year he had to deny cheese deliveries to other stores: the farm doesn't yield enough milk to make more cheese (it takes 450 liters of milk to make 45 kg of cheese) and he doesn't want to buy milk elsewhere, even from a neighbor, because he wouldn't know first-hand what the cows had eaten and wouldn't be able to control the flavors. He works with the tastes of his terroir and wants it no other way.
He has help: Sophie Martinet, who became his business partner a year-and-a-half ago; Xavier, who is interning at the fromagerie and David, an expert cheesemaker who came to replace him when he had to leave for a while (sorry, I don't have last names for Xavier or David). Three people need to work full-time to maintain production levels.
Now Lin's cheese isn't typical of what Normandy usually produces, i.e. soft cheeses (such as Camembert, Pont-L'Évêque or Livarot). Tommes are normally to be found in mountainous areas, such as the Alps or the Massif Central, and they are often low in fat. Lin's isn't. He uses full fat raw milk and the resulting cheese is wonderfully tender. The one he cut open for us had been aging since the previous June (since we visited in March, it was about nine months old). It gets better as it ages but Lin says the demand is such that it is difficult to keep enough tommes around to age them.
He currently sells cheeses made in January 2012, November 2011 and June 2011. He says that once he kept a cheese for two and a half years to sell at Christmas time. He put it for sale at twice the regular price -which is €12/kg or a little bit under $8 per pound- and it flew off the table.
Lin's tomme is an uncooked pressed cheese (like Cheddar). I know this is normally a bread blog but just in case you are interested in cheese (I know I am: wine and cheese have got to be my favorite food pairings), take a quick look at how it's made (the first photo is kind of foggy because it was very warm in the room and we were coming from outside, so glasses and camera lenses misted up right away!).

(photo courtesy of Tree-Top Baking)

The first few weeks, the cheese is washed two to three times a week and at the very beginning, it gets flipped over at each washing. Afterwards, the washing occurs only about once a week: it starts from the top shelves (where the older cheeses reside) so that the bacteria naturally occurring on the rind can trickle down and bring more flavor to the younger tommes. The shelves have to be made out of white wood (ash tree, Norway spruce, fir tree). Any other wood would impart an unwelcome taste to the cheese.

We were sent to Lin's farm by Seth, from Boulangerie Les Co'Pains, but I am not sure Lin is eager to have unannounced visitors. If you are in the area and want to try his cheese (which I strongly recommend because it is very tasty), your best bet is to go the markets at Caen or Mézidon and look or ask for Fromagerie GAEC du Bois Canon. You won't regret it...

Camembert in a Sourdough Jacket

My niece Flo whose beautiful and passionate blog, Makanai, is a treasure trove for gourmets and gourmands of all ilks as well as a mine of information on food intolerances and ways of coping with them - in French, I know, but there is always Google Translator) recently called attention on her Facebook page to a most appealing and ingenious appetizer, Camembert rôti en croûte de pain (literally Camembert baked in a bread crust), posted by Cindy of Food for Thoughts.

Baked Bries or Camemberts are nothing new. But a French cheese baked inside a miche au levain (a sourdough boule), now, that's something I had yet to see. As luck would have it, we had just bought a pair of French Camemberts at Costco.

I had no boules in my freezer and no immediate prospect of baking one since my levain was still in reactivation mode after our long absence. However our local Trader Joe's came to the rescue once more: I found there a boule of just the right size, made exclusively of flour, water and salt. Perfect!

I followed the original recipe to a t (except that I didn't use sugar and that, having no garlic powder on hand, I just rubbed the inside of the hollowed-out miche with a fresh clove). I am not kidding myself that our baked Camembert was as flavorful as Cindy's. It did come from France but it wasn't made from raw unpasteurized milk, so it was certainly a good bit tamer than the one she was able to find in London. But it was still good enough that nobody seemed to mind (the bread was crisp on the outside and the cheese deliciously velvety and smokey-spicy). At least I imagine that's the reason why it vanished so fast. Thank you, Cindy, for this great idea! Just in time for holiday entertaining too...

Make sure the cheese fits inside the hollowed-out boule

but don't bake it with the wrapper still on!

Ingredients:

• 1 Camembert from France (preferably made from raw unpasteurized milk if available in the country where you live)
• 1 small sourdough boule (not San Francisco sourdough though as the sourness might overpower the cheese)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon chili powder (I used chipotle chili)
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder (see above for possible substitution)
• 1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
• 1 tablespoon salted butter

Note: the original recipe also calls for 1/2 teaspoon of sugar but I didn't use any.

Don't you love the fragrance of garlic on fresh crumb?

To maximize it, split the clove in two

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 356°F/180° C (using convection if available)
2. Cut off the top of the boule and set aside
3. Hollow out the center of the boule and of the lid (making sure the Camembert easily fits into both)
4. In a small bowl, mix chili, garlic powder (if using. If not using, rub the inside of the bread and of the lid with raw clove of garlic) and mustard powder
5. Lightly butter the inside of the boule and of the lid
6. Generously sprinkle the inside of the boule and of the lid with spice mixture
7. Pre-cut the boule all around to make it easier to pull out croûtons later on (see picture)
8. Scrape the Camembert all around, not forgetting the sides and bottom
9. Place inside the hollowed boule, scatter rest of spice mixture over it
10. Place the lid over the cheese making sure it fits the bottom snugly
11. Bake in pre-heated oven for 30 minutes
12. Let cool a few minutes before serving (serve the top alongside so that guests can rip chunks of it to dip in the melted cheese when the sides of the boule are all eaten up).

Printable recipe

All dressed up and ready for the oven

The Camembert in a Sourdough Jacket goes to Stefanie whose marvelous blog, Hefe und mehr, is hosting this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Kathy's Asiago & Onion Bread

This sinfully delicious bread is one that Kathy from Empty Nest Bakery brings to the Hillsborough Farmers' Market every week as her customers never seem to have enough of it. I made it yesterday afternoon, using her formula. Since I had started late, it was close to bed time when it came out of the oven but the fragrance was such that the Man kept circling the cooling loaves and if it hadn't still been too hot for comfort, I believe he would sneaked one under his pillow against a late night snack attack. As it is, he will have it for breakfast and it will be a treat! The proportions are based on one loaf weighing 560g before baking. I multiplied them by three and each of my loaves weighed about 555 g before baking and an average of 550g after.

Ingredients: For the dough 226g unbleached bread flour (I used all-purpose) 90 g mature starter (hydration rate: 80%) 153g water (counting the water present in the starter, the bread hydration rate is 70%) 5.52 g salt 41g grated Asiago cheese 28g onions, peeled, sliced and slowly caramelized in olive oil (either in the oven or on the stovetop) 11g garlic olive oil 5.5 g chives, rinsed, drained and chopped For the topping 30g onions, peeled, sliced and slowly caramelized in olive oil 7g roasted garlic (I didn't have any garlic so I used garlic powder) 50g Asiago cheese, grated (or 30g Mozzarella and 20g Asiago) (I used Asiago plus the fresh goat cheese I had left over from the Nuke-the-Zuke Quick Bread) Method:

1. Put flour, 90% of the water and starter in the bowl of the mixer and mix until just incorporated
2. Let rest, covered, for 30 minutes (autolyse)
3. Add the salt and mix on low speed for 5 minutes or until gluten is developed to improved mix (when taking a piece of dough in wet hands and stretching it gently in all directions, you should be able to see translucent and opaque areas and the dough doesn't tear readily, adding the rest of the water as necessary to get a medium soft consistency
4. Slowly incorporate the garlic oil, then the cheese, onion and chives
5. Transfer dough to oiled bucket and cover tightly (it should be tacky and soft)
6. Let ferment at warmish room temperature for 2 to 3 hours (or until the dough, when poked, keeps the imprint of your finger)
7. Turn the dough out on a slightly oiled surface and pre-shape as a boule
8. Let it rest 20 minutes
9. Shape as a tight boule and let it proof on a piece of parchment paper (dusted with semolina flour or corn meal) under plastic sheet for 1 hour at warmish room temperature
10. Turn on the oven to 450F/232C taking care to put an empty metal pan on the lower shelf
11. When the boule is ready, massage it with olive oil, dimpling it with your fingers
12. Spread the topping on it
    
13. Score in a circle all around the topping (Oops! I actually forgot that step!)
    
14. Pour a cup of cold water into the empty metal pan and slide the boule directly on the baking stone
15. Spray the oven generously with cold water
16. Bake for 25 minutes, check the loaf, if necessary tent a piece of foil over the top to prevent burning
17. Bake 5 to 10 minutes longer for a total of 35 minutes
18. Let cool on a wire rack and use a lot of self-restraint not to tear into it before it is cold!

And here is one of the loaves I baked yesterday using Kathy's formula:

My loaf isn't quite as pretty as Kathy's since I forgot the scoring which creates a nice "frame" for the topping. Also the crust seems a bit thinner to me and the crumb a bit tighter. That may be because:

• My starter was not quite mature enough. I had fed it the afternoon before leaving for the night but it got very cold in the house (it was in the low 50's when I came back the following day) and the starter looked quite dormant. I put it in front of a space heater to wake it up and waited about 3 hours before mixing but still, it might have used a little bit more fermentation time.
• As mentioned before, I didn't use the same flour as Kathy. I am curious to see what will happen when I use a stronger (more gluten-rich) flour.

So next time, I'll go for half bread flour and half all-purpose flour and the next time still, all bread flour. And then of course I'll try again with various percentages of white whole wheat flour. I'll report back, so stay tuned! The formula is definitely a keeper whichever flour is used. Thank you, Kathy, for sharing it!