We are sold out of Brother Laurent for 2008. This week we made the first batch which will be for sale in 2009. This is a supple washed-rind cheese based on French Meunster that takes at least 90 days to develop its characteristic orange aromatic rind. It's a lot of work, and if I didn't enjoy eating it so much, I wouldn't be making it.
The first thing to do was to put the tall blue cheese forms aside (we made these ourselves from food-grade PVC) and break out the fancy, expensive Kadova cheese molds. These are in 4 pieces (meaning 4 times the clean-up, as my husband Dan says).
Molds are filled and stacked one over the other. Not a lot of action photos because I was up to my elbows in curds and clean-up. These have to be 'baby-sat' the first hour to prevent them tipping over and falling off the table while the curds are compacted.
The next morning, these slightly-pressed cheeses are ready for un-molding.
This is a one-kilo (2.2 lb.) fresh cheese. There are 110 of them (though I really didn't count, it's my recollection that I have 110 moulds, but I could be wrong).
We salt them by hand and stack in a cold, humid aging room, turning every day.
(Cheese-making secret) Cheeses are periodically bathed in brine and b-linens (a bacteria) to form the sticky rind.
When they are finished curing, we wrap them in copper-colored foil and send them downstairs to cold storage. They will stay that way for several months, making them a good keeper, which is essential for a small cheesemaking operation such as ours - we aren't under any pressure to get them out the door by a certain date, and can have them available during the entire six months we do farmer's market.
