cheeseunderground anna landmark, diana murphy, history, mt horeb historical society, tony hook, willi lehner, Wisconsin cheese

Got Cheese History? 100 Cheese Factories Now Documented

Newcomer cheesemaker Anna Landmark shares cheese with veteran
cheesemaker Willi Lehner, whose father emigrated from Switzerland
and managed Rysers Cheese Factory in Mt. Horeb for 21 years.

More than 100 cheese factories in southwestern Dane County are now mapped and remembered with extensive information and photos online, thanks to the Mount Horeb Area Historical Society.

The Society unveiled the new cheese factory website on Sunday in downtown Mt. Horeb on the site of the former Henze cheese warehouse, now Zalucha Studios. Next door is the former Rysers Cheese Factory, today home to the Grumpy Troll Brew Pub, where Bleu Mont cheesemaker Willi Lehner’s father – also Willi Lehner – was the managing cheesemaker for 21 years. It seems downtown Mt. Horeb, similar to much of rural Wisconsin, was once a cheese mecca.

The website is extensive, noting the years each factory operated, the types of cheese crafted, each cheesemaker’s name and the years they made cheese at the facility, as well as extensive notes on what was happening throughout the years at each location. It’s a literal treasure trove of cheese history.

So what makes someone want to create a website detailing all the cheese factories that were once in their area? Well, sometimes to understand the present, it’s helpful to understand the past. So this past winter, Society volunteers created database inventories of the area’s schools, cheese factories, churches and cemeteries.

“We found a map where it was just black with dots,” archivist Shan Thomas said of an early 20th century map that located factories in the areas surrounding Mount Horeb. “They were everywhere.”

The web resource actually began with the Society mapping schools in the area. Volunteers identified 52 – yes, 52 – schools in the area that now makes up just the Mount Horeb Area School District. Amazingly enough, 40 of them still stand, and were photographed for the project.

The Society’s schoolhouse project was the subject of an article in the Wisconsin State Journal last year, and the article piqued the interest of Doug Norgord,  a Mount Horeb resident who owns a mapping solutions company. Norgord contacted the Society and offered his services for free.  Through the technology of his company, Geographic Techniques LLC, the project took on further life.

Norgord was part of a perfect storm of people, all Mount Horeb area residents, qualified to pull off this project: Thomas, a former archivist at Luther College; former Mount Horeb school administrator and principal John Pare; computer programmer Merel Black; and Brynn Bruijn, an international photographer whose work has appeared in books and in magazines such as National Geographic and Town and Country. The volunteers also worked with the Mount Horeb Landmarks Foundation and the historical societies of Blue Mounds and Perry township.

Pare and Bruijn scouted the countryside for former schools and sought permission from homeowners who now live on those properties to photograph and document the properties. Once the volunteers got going, they saw a pattern – clustered with the schools were cheese factories, churches and cemeteries. Ask anyone who has grown up in a small town in Wisconsin, and they’ll tell you the most prominent features are the school, the bar, the cemetary, and the old cheese factory on the edge of town now turned into a house. In fact, most former cheese and butter making facilities have today become private residences and are easy to spot because of their elongated style of architecture.

“What we notice is that these little areas were communities,” Black said. “They rode on horseback, they’d drop the milk off and drop the kids off at school.”

Cheese makers at the Mount Horeb Creamery and Cheese Company, taken
on Sept. 15, 1939. The creamery building now houses the Grumpy Troll Brew
Pub. Photo courtesy of the Mt. Horeb Historical Society.

On hand Sunday to celebrate the revival of cheese factory history were several area cheesemakers, including Willi Lehner, who said he often helped his dad clean at the Rysers Cheese Factory in downtown Mt. Horeb. “My dad would often remind me that for the first two years of his apprenticeship in Switzerland, all he did was clean. He didn’t get to actually make cheese until year three.”

Also in the crowd was southwestern Wisconsin native Diana Kalscheur Murphy of Dreamfarm, who now makes amazing goat’s milk cheeses on her farm near Cross Plains, Anna Landmark of Landmark Creamery in Albany, who is making sheep, cow and mixed milk cheeses at both Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain and Clock Shadow Creamery in Milwaukee, and Tony Hook of Hook’s Cheese in Mineral Point, home to world champion cheeses including an array of aged cheddars and blues. In fact, Hook’s brother, Jerry, and sister, Julie, both cheesemakers at Hook’s, are actually alumni of Mount Horeb High School and Jerry still lives in Mount Horeb. Yes, it is a small world.

Each of the cheesemakers spoke for a few minutes, talking about their operations and remembering their family histories. A crowd of about 75 people noshed on local cheese and drank local beer, reminiscing of all cheesy things past and present.

One cheese not represented at the gathering was the stinky granddaddy of them all. The crowd got a chuckle when one attendee asked Tony Hook his favorite cheese. “The answer might surprise you,” Hook said. “It’s Limburger, made today at only one plant in the nation – Chalet Cheese Cooperative in Monroe.” Just goes to show you that no matter how many things change, one of the oldest cheeses in Wisconsin is still front and center.

cheeseunderground aging, cheese, fda, Wisconsin cheese, wooden boards

FDA Further "Clarifies" Stance on Aging Cheese on Wooden Boards

After dozens of U.S. major news outlets did an outstanding job of reporting news on the FDA clarifying its position on the use of wooden boards when it comes to aging cheese, the agency today further clarified its earlier clarification.

Here is the FDA Statement:

“The FDA does not have a new policy banning the use of wooden shelves in cheese-making, nor is there any FSMA requirement in effect that addresses this issue. Moreover, the FDA has not taken any enforcement action based solely on the use of wooden shelves.

In the interest of public health, the FDA’s current regulations state that utensils and other surfaces that contact food must be “adequately cleanable” and properly maintained. Historically, the FDA has expressed concern about whether wood meets this requirement and has noted these concerns in inspectional findings. FDA is always open to evidence that shows that wood can be safely used for specific purposes, such as aging cheese.

The FDA will engage with the artisanal cheese-making community to determine whether certain types of cheeses can safely be made by aging them on wooden shelving.”

This back-stepping in both tone and message is welcome news for the hundreds of cheesemakers across the country who have invested their life savings in making premium artisanal cheese and aging it on wooden boards.

I want to give a special shout-out to every consumer who wrote a letter, signed a petition, left a comment on a blog or Facebook page and generally made standing up for artisan food a main-stream American issue. In the end, everything is politics. Thank you for taking a stand. We will most certainly need you in the future.

Cheese for life!

cheeseunderground cheese, cupola, paula homan, red barn family farms, Wisconsin cheese

Just Released: Red Barn Family Farms Cūpola

Three years after working to perfect the recipe for a new farmhouse cheese, Red Barn Family Farms in Wisconsin unveiled its new masterpiece, Cūpola this week.

Cūpola is a semi-hard cheese crafted in 11-pound wheels. The flavor is fruity and nutty with hints of caramel and toasted pineapple, while the texture is firm, yet supple enough to cut and eat with a cracker. Aged seven months, the first batch was pre-sold to select retailers, so it’s a bit hard to find. But another batch will be ready in late June, so chances are you’ll find it in more stores later this summer.

I pre-ordered two wheels back in April for Metcalfe’s Market-Hilldale in Madison, and then promptly forgot about it. So you can imagine how excited I was when the cheese magically appeared on my counter this week. After demoing it exactly twice, one wheel is already gone, so you can bet the farm I’ll be pre-ordering more wheels when they become available in June.

You may know Red Barn Family Farms for their Heritage Weis Cheddars, which have won multiple gold medals in national and international competitions, and which are made by cheesemaker Wayne Hintz at Springside Cheese in Oconto Falls, Wis.

For Cūpola, they partnered with U.S. Champion Cheesemaker Katie Fuhrmann at LaClare Farms, and worked with the folks at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research to perfect the recipe. As always, the cheese is crafted using milk exclusively from a group of eight small family farms, all certified by the American Humane Association and held accountable to the Red Barn Rules, stringent standards of animal health care and milk quality.

Company owners Paula and Terry Homan say the cheese will always be made in small batches, but consistent availability will likely happen by the holiday season.

As for the name, Paula and Terry coined it themselves. If you’re not familiar with the term, a cūpola is the small structure on top of traditional Wisconsin barns (which are usually red). The Homans describe a cūpola as a pinnacle. 

“We think this cheese is a pinnacle product for Red Barn,” Paula says. “We’ve got a world-class cheesemaker, top-quality milk, an American original, and a recipe perfected over three years with the help of cheese experts at the Center for Dairy Research.”

With its stellar pedigree and a flavor that delivers, Cūpola reflects everything Red Barn Family Farms stands for. Founded in 2008 with a mission to help preserve excellent small family farms in Wisconsin, the Homans (Terry is a licensed veterinarian) believe there is an intrinsic link between the health and care of dairy animals and the quality and flavor of the milk they produce

Over the years, the Homans have hand-selected small family farms that meet their Red Barn Rules. Each farm has an average herd size of 55 cows. “Cows are known by name and live longer lives than the industry average,” Paula says.

Happy cows + great milk + champion cheesemakers = awesome cheese. Congrats, Red Barn Family Farms!

cheeseunderground center for dairy research, portugal cheese, spain cheese, Wisconsin cheese

Workshop: Goat and Sheep Milk Cheeses of Spain and Portugal

This just in from the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research: a few spots are still open for the April 15 Goat and Sheep Milk Cheeses of Spain and Portugal class in Madison.

The short course features a special guest coming from Portugal: Mariana Marques D’Almeida, an industry consultant, technical judge and small ruminant expert from Lisbon. Attendees will learn from both lectures and a focus on hands-on learning with a 3-hour cheesemaking lab with recipes from Spain and Portugal included. The staff at CDR are super excited about the class, and encourage artisan cheesemakers to enroll.

Bénédicte Coudé, Assistant Coordinator – Cheese Industry and Applications Group at CDR, says attendees will discover the science behind sheep, goat and mixed milk composition, coagulants, manufacturing protocols and much more.

Fee is only $150 for the entire day. Learn more and register online by clicking here.

cheeseunderground Andy Hatch, pleasant ridge reserve, rush creek reserve, scott mericka, uplands cheese, Wisconsin cheese

A New Day at Uplands Cheese

Uplands Cheese, home to the much-awarded Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese, is officially under new ownership. Cheesemaker Andy Hatch and Herdsman Scott Mericka, both of whom began as apprentices years ago at Uplands, announced today they have purchased the dairy farm and cheese company from its founders, Mike Gingrich and Dan Patenaude.

Most industry folks know that Hatch and Mericka have been managing the farm since 2010, leading to a gradual transition to the new management. Andy says the official papers were signed in February, and Uplands Cheese now officially belongs to a new generation.

Mike and Carol Gingrich are pleased with the transfer. “This has been a long time in the works and we couldn’t be more pleased to see the farm, the cows and the cheese pass into such capable hands,” Mike says.

Uplands Cheese was founded in 2000, when Gingrich and Patenaude began crafting Pleasant Ridge Reserve with the grass-fed milk of their cows. In 2001, the cheese vaulted to fame after winning the coveted Best of Show award at the annual American Cheese Society competition. It repeated the honor in 2005 and again in 2010, while also being named U.S. Champion Cheese in 2003. To date, Pleasant Ridge Reserve is the only cheese to have won ACS Best of Show three times, and is the only cheese to have won both of the major, national competitions.

Hatch, who has overseen cheese production since 2007, believes the Pleasant Ridge Reserve crafted today is better than ever. “We’ve continued to improve our pastures and our herd, and every year we refine our work in the ripening rooms, to the point where almost every batch is as good as the standout batches of several years ago,” he said.

Pleasant Ridge Reserve is made only in the summer months, while the farm’s cows are on pasture. In 2010, Hatch added a second cheese to the Uplands repertoire. Rush Creek Reserve is a soft-ripened cheese wrapped in a strip of spruce bark and made with the hay-fed milk of autumn months. Rush Creek Reserve cheese quickly attainted cult status in the cheese world, and continues to sell out quickly each November and December, when it’s sold across the country.

Congratulations to Uplands Cheese! We can’t wait to see what you do next.

cheeseunderground monona terrace, Wisconsin cheese

Taste 50 Cheeses at March 19 World Champion Cheese Charity Event

Hey cheese peeps: the world’s largest cheese competition is coming to Madison, and with it, an exclusive opportunity for you to taste 50 of the world’s most rare cheeses and witness judges from six continents execute the final round of judging to determine the 2014 World Champion Cheese.

On Wednesday, March 19, the World Championship Cheese Contest and Wisconsin Cheese Originals welcome the public to Exhibition Hall at Monona Terrace for the Champion Cheese Charity Event – A Benefit for Second Harvest Foodbank. Tickets are $35 and will be sold only in advance at www.cheesecontest.com.  The event hosts guarantee at least $10,000 from ticket proceeds will be donated to Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin. Attendance is capped at 600 persons, and this event WILL sell out.

Cheeses for the evening will be selected by my cheese sister, Sara Hill, and myself, from 2,615 entrants into the 30th biennial World Championship Cheese Contest, arriving from not only across the United States and great European cheesemaking nations, but also from Australia, Canada, Croatia, Japan, Norway, Romania and South Africa.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m., with the Championship Round of Judging to start at 7 p.m.  Attendees will be on hand for the final round of cheese judging, as 50 expert judges from 20 countries determine and name the Best of Show. At least 50 of the world’s best and most rare cheeses will be sampled until 9 p.m. Complimentary appetizers will be served and a cash bar available.

A BIG thank you to our event sponsors for their support: Belgioioso Cheese, Brennan’s Market, Holland’s Family Cheese, Larry’s Market, Metcalfe’s Market, and Sartori.

I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

cheeseunderground crave brothers farmstead cheese, Wisconsin cheese

Welcome Back, Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese

More than 7 months after suffering a voluntary recall of their Les Freres, Petit Frere and Petit Frere with Truffle cheeses, Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese in Waterloo, Wisconsin is back in business this week, resulting in a collective cheer of “whoo-hoo!” from mozzarella lovers everywhere.

Crave Brothers Farmstead Rope, Fresh Mozzarella Logs, Fresh Mozzarella Balls, and their many fresh mozzarella balls in brine – including my favorite, Marinated Ciliegine – are back in stores. As I stocked the shelves at Metcalfe’s Market Hilldale this afternoon (where I work as the specialty cheese manager), customers stopped and put packages of the cheese in their carts before I could even get them onto the shelf. I’m thinking I’m going to have to re-order before the weekend.

While the family has remained understandably quiet since the plant shut down in July, the industry has rallied around the Craves with virtual hugs, supportive emails and note cards, wishing them a full recovery and healthy road to get back on their feet. This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted on their website that “this outbreak appears to be over” and the Craves posted a simple “We’re making Cheese!” on their website.

So here’s a hearty welcome back to Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese (insert giant hug here). We sure missed you guys.

cheeseunderground bletsoe's cheese, brian gunning, cheese crisp, cracker, decatur dairy, wausome wafers, Wisconsin cheese

Say This 10 Times Fast: Awesome Wausome Wafers From Wausau

You know that feeling when you discover a new food you never knew existed but after consuming twice the number of recommended servings in one sitting, promptly decide you can no longer live without it? Yeah, that happened to me this week with cheese crisps, courtesy of a man named Brian Gunning from Wausau, Wisconsin.

In between working more than a decade as a graphic designer, marketing consulting and mobile computing inventor (he holds a patent for a Batman-belt-like inventory device), Brian has been secretly cooking cheese into perfect circles of pure crispy bliss for years. He started in 2000, as a bachelor in downtown Madison, who for fun would fry cheese in a skillet until it turned crispy.

“I remember being really excited and taking my first batch of cheese to work one day, and the people I worked with were absolutely revolted that I would do such a thing. So needless to say, I gave up on it for awhile,” he said. Luckily for us, he perservered. Fast forward a few years, now married with children, Brian started packing his kids’ lunch and including the ever popular Goldfish crackers. “Have you ever looked at the nutritional value of Goldfish? They’re terrible for you,” he said. “So instead, I put some cheese on the griddle, and the kids liked it. So I started packing cheese crisps in their lunches instead.”

Today, Brian is still cooking cheese, and as it turns out, he’s gotten incredbily good at it. After setting up an 800-foot commercial kitchen near Wausau using stainless steel equipment he scored from a bankrupt Krispy Creme (thank you failed donuts!), he’s unveiled his new Wausome Wafers (Wholesome + Awesome = Wausome) to a select number of specialty food stores in Wisconsin, where they’re taking off like an out of control grease fire. Well, maybe that’s not be best way to put it, but you know what I mean.

So what exactly are Wausome Wafers? Pure and simple, they are fried cheese (well, actually baked, but they seem fried – I got sort of lost in Brian’s scientific cooking explanation – there’s a reason I’m an English major). No gluten, no carbs, and sugar free. Think Parmesan crisps, only better, using different kinds of cheese made only in Wisconsin.

The first two Wausome Wafer flavors to hit the market are Clever Cheddar and Hug & Kiss Colby/Swiss. The Clever Cheddar is made entirely from cheddar crafted at Bletsoe’s Honey Bee Cheese Factory near Wausau. It’s a straight-forward cheese crisp that’s surprisingly addictive, containing the perfect amount of cheddary goodness. Then there’s the Hug & Kiss Colby/Swiss. The cheese is made by Decatur Dairy (Colby Swiss was invented by Master Cheesemaker Steve Stettler) and it’s sweet, with a bite of swiss, “right in the kisser.” It comes out lacey but marbled, smooth but sharp, a true Wisconsin original.

Brian has four more flavors in development, including Soupa Gouda, Party Havarti, Such Bliss Swiss, and Forever Cheddar (an aged cheddar crisp). When I asked about his recipe development process, he said his market research is simple.

“I take them to church and put them out at the potluck and stand in the background. Then I watch the expressions of people who eat them. Typically, if they turn out well, the little old ladies devour them. They gather them up in a napkin and run off to someone else and say, ‘You have to eat this!’ Then I know I’ve got a winner,” he said.

Each crisp is 1-1/2 inches in diameter and packaged in just about the cutest, best-ever designed packaging you’ve ever seen. Because the crisps are fragile, the boxes are triangular, with each lid acting as a spring cushion. And in a novel marketing concept, each box tells the story of the cheese and the cheesemaker, not the story of the product creator.

“I wanted to tell the stories and celebrate the cheeses and cheesemakers, because without them, this product would not exist,” Brian says.

And what about the name? Turns out it’s a combination of factors. The first was the City of Wausau’s attempt to rebrand itself with the ever-creative tagline of: “It’s Wausome.” Shockingly, the slogan failed, but a local high school kid did adopt “wausome” as his Twitter handle and made a few t-shirts. It was Brian’s mother-in-law who suggested Brian adopt “Wausome Wafers” as the product name, and it was a mentor at the county entrepreneurial center who gave him the tagline: “Wholesome + Awesome = Wausome.”

“So basically, I stole the name from a high school kid, my mother-in-law and a teacher. I’m surrounded by creative people. It’s a good thing,” he said. “I added my skills of knowing how to brand something to make it personable and effective, then added my background in supply chain and an obsession with eating fried cheese late at night.”

Wausome Wafers are shelf-stable with a 6-month shelf life. Brian encourages consumers to not only enjoy the wafers, but to then visit the cheesemakers’ websites and also purchase the cheese from which it was fried to a crisp. “I’m just helping cheese realize it’s true potential,” he says. And I would argue he’s accomplished that goal.

To get your very own box of Wausome Wafers, visit Vino Latte, Lil Ole Winemakers Shoppe, and Downtown Grocery in Wausau. They’ll also be available in Madison at Metcalfe’s Market-Hilldale starting Saturday, and at Fromagination early next week. Once you have your very own box, you’ll be saying it with me: Wausome Wafers are awesome!

cheeseunderground LaClare Farms, Landmark Creamery, Rose boero, Wisconsin cheese, wisconsin cheese originals

Want To Be A Wisconsin Cheesemaker?

Good news aspiring cheesemakers! Wisconsin Cheese Originals announced today applications for its 2014 Beginning Cheesemaker Scholarship are available. The $2,500 award will help one aspiring cheesemaker earn his or her Wisconsin cheesemaking license and make new artisan, farmstead or specialty cheeses.

As you know, Wisconsin is the only state in the nation to require cheesemakers to be licensed, a lengthy process that can take as long as 18 months, requires the attendance at five cheesemaking courses, and 240 hours of apprenticeship with an existing licensed Wisconsin cheesemaker.

Applications for the 2014 Wisconsin Cheese Originals Beginning Cheesemaker Scholarship are available for download at www.WisconsinCheeseOriginals.com. Applications are due March 20. The recipient will be chosen by a review committee and notified by April 7.

Wisconsin Cheese Originals has awarded $10,000 in scholarship monies to beginning cheesemakers since 2010. Past program scholarship recipients include:

2013: Jennifer Digman owns and runs Krayola Sky Dairy, a goat dairy in Cuba City. She successfully obtained her cheesemaker’s license in 2013 after earning the Wisconsin Cheese Originals scholarship. She works at both Uplands Cheese and Roelli Cheese as a professional affineur (cheese aging specialist). Digman has dreams of building her own on-farm creamery to craft fresh, hand-dipped chevre, aged mixed milk artisan cheeses, and hand-washed Alpine-styles. She hopes to pass the operation down to her two young daughters.

2012: Anna Landmark owns and runs a small-scale sustainable farm with her husband and children in Albany, Wis. In 2013, Anna successfully launched Landmark Creamery and began making seasonal sheep, cow and water buffalo cheeses, using the facilities at Cedar Grove Cheese in Plain, Wis. At the 2013 Wisconsin Cheese Originals Festival, her Bawdy Buffalo, a water buffalo Taleggio-style cheese, was named one of the best up-and-coming American Original cheeses in the nation.

2011: Rose Boero, a dairy goat breeder in Custer, Wis, successfully obtained her cheesemaker’s license after receiving the scholarship in 2011. Today, she makes a variety of goat’s milk cheeses at Willow Creek Cheese and teaches beginning cheesemaking classes in her home for amateur cheesemakers. She is developing plans to build her own cheese plant at her dairy goat farm, where she and her husband have raised Toggenburg dairy goats for 25 years.

2010: Katie Hedrich Furhmann, a goat’s milk cheesemaker, obtained her license after receiving the first Wisconsin Cheese Originals Scholarship. At the 2011 U.S. Champion Cheese Contest, she took Best in Show for her goat’s milk cheese, LaClare Farms Evalon, and was named the 2011 U.S. Champion Cheesemaker, the youngest cheesemaker to ever earn the title. In 2013, she and her family built a new farmstead cheese plant on their farm near Pipe, Wis. She launches new cheeses annually.

For those of you not in the know, Wisconsin Cheese Originals is an organization I started in 2009. Our motto is: Have Fun. Do Good. Eat Cheese. We are a membership organization sharing information about Wisconsin artisan cheeses through a variety of events, all in the spirit of celebrating Wisconsin cheesemakers. You can join for just $35 a year and be invited to tours, dinners, classes and super cool tasting events. More info on becoming a cheese geek here: Wisconsin Cheese Originals.

cheeseunderground artisan cheese, juustoleipa, Wisconsin cheese

Screw Velveeta, Eat Juustoleipa

Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board

As Kraft continues to perpetuate its “Velveeta Shortage = World is Ending” public relations campaign to drive sales for the Super Bowl — seriously, show me a store where the shelves are bare of processed cheese — I say it’s time to start a new trend here in Subarctica and eat warm cheese that does not consist of milk and whey protein concentrate. 

Yes, I made up the term Subarctica to represent where I live in Wisconsin, even though we appear to be on the tail end of an arctic polar vortex blitz featuring temps of minus 20 degrees F for the past week. So it seems to be a good time to talk about something warm. And what’s better than warm cheese?

People, I give you the best warm cheese outside fresh curds from a vat. Called Juustoleipa (pronounced oo-stah-lee-pah, with the first syllable rhyming with the word who), this cheese originates from Scandinavia, where the fine folks in northern Finland have been making it from reindeer, cow and goat milk for 200 years. 

In Wisconsin, you’ll sometimes see it labeled as Bread Cheese, because a) that’s how Juustoleipa translates in English, and b) the cheese is actually baked (like bread) during the cheesemaking process. Made without a starter culture – a process similar to making feta – Juustoleipa is merely fresh curds pressed into blocks. It it then briefly baked. The result is a squeaky cheese with a mild, buttery flavor. The best part is the splotchy brown crust, formed when heat from baking caramelizes the sugars on the outside of the cheese. The cheese is made to be grilled in a skillet or warmed in an oven (it doesn’t melt when heated) and eaten for breakfast with coffee and maple syrup or honey, or after a meal with jam or jelly.

Juustoleipa first came on the scene in Wisconsin back in 2002, when scientists at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research (CDR), via funding from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, worked to recreate the original Finnish recipe in an effort to preserve a traditional, ethnic cheese and develop a safe manufacturing method to share with small Wisconsin cheese factories and farmstead operations. Cheese Scientist Jim Path, now retired from CDR, traveled to northern Michigan, where he found an elderly couple producing it in tiny quantities, and then to a farmstead in Finland just 150 miles from the Arctic Circle where he studied the manufacturing technique.

In September of 2002, CDR hosted a seminar attended by 28 Wisconsin cheesemakers and 10 Wisconsin Master Cheesemakers that included a hands-on demonstration of making Juustoleipa. The idea was that the cheese would be ideal for a small factory or start-up.

Today, you’ll find six different Wisconsin cheese companies crafting it under a variety of names.

  • Carr Valley Cheese Bread Cheese (in Traditional, Garlic, Chipotle and Jalapeno flavors)
  • Babcock Hall Juustoleipa and Jalapeno Juustoleipa
  • Pasture Pride Cheese Juusto (in Traditional, Italiano, Jalapeno, Chipotle flavors, as well as with Nueske’s Bacon), Guusto (goat’s milk version) and Oven Baked Cheeses filled with 5yr cheddar, Parmesan, and aged goat cheese
  • Bass Lake Cheese Juustoleipa (Cheesemaker/Owner Scott Erickson is the only certified master cheesemaker in Juustoleipa)
  • Brunkow Cheese Brun-uusto Cheese
  • Noble View Creamery Juustoleipa (in Traditional, Jalapeno and Habanero flavors, and with bacon)

So while here in Wisconsin we enjoy all the taste of Juustoleipa, we haven’t yet adopted its cultural practices. Legend has it that in Finland, mothers of “eligible women” – I love that phrase – used to offer suitors a cup of coffee with the cheese and, if the man liked the cheese, he married the girl. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Who wouldn’t want to marry a man who didn’t like cheese?

As a side note, if you’re looking for a way to taste all of these Juustoleipas, I’ve created an “Juustopalooza” event in the specialty cheese department at Metcalfe’s Market-Hilldale in Madison on Saturday, Feb. 1 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. We’ll be frying up 3 different Juusto cheeses for you to sample with many more available for sale. See you then!