UW unveils new cheese with scandinavian roots

Is it time for cheddar and mozzarella to moooove over? Cheesemakers at the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research, within the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, unveiled recently a new specialty cheese for Wisconsin cheese producers.

Juustoleipä (pronounced HOO-stah-lee-pah), which means “bread cheese,” is a flat, squeaky cheese with a very buttery flavor. It can be stored in the refrigerator for up to two months or frozen for up to one year. The cheese, produced for more than 200 years in northern Finland and Sweden, doesn’t melt, but it can be warmed (including in a microwave for 10 or 20 seconds, until it glistens). It’s popular served with honey, lingonberry jam or cloudberry jam as a dessert, or dipped in hot coffee.

“This cheese is unusual in that it may be the only cheese in the world to be baked during the cheesemaking process,” says cheese expert James Path of the Wisconsin Center for Dairy Research. “The baking heat caramelizes the sugars on the outside of the cheese to form a tasty crust – similar to brown bread. Also, like bread, the baking kills harmful bacteria in the cheese, enhances the flavor and extends the shelf life.” Path says that the cheese is easy to make, but requires ovens for baking.

Path emphasizes that baking the cheese, which kills the bacteria, is a crucial part of the process – and an important part of the dairy center’s research. “Currently, many of the production methods for this cheese don’t bring the internal temperature of the cheese as high as our methods do,” he explains. “This means that other versions of the cheese may not have the enhanced flavor and extended shelf life that ours does. Our juustoleipä is a true baked product and is extremely safe.”

The college’s Department of Food Science collaborated with the center in testing the new cheese.

Bread cheese is traditionally prepared for seasonal holidays and has played a role in marriage traditions, according to Path. He says that the mothers of eligible woman used to offer suitors a cup of coffee with cheese and, if the man liked the cheese, he married the daughter. Legend has it that juustoleipä (as it is known in Finland – in Sweden it is called ostbröd, which also means “bread cheese”) was originally made with reindeer milk. However, it is now produced with cow’s milk in both Europe and on farmsteads in northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where it is known as “squeaky cheese.”

How did cheesemakers, in a state where the cow reigns supreme, become interested in a variety from halfway around the world that was once made with reindeer milk? The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board funded a specialty cheese project at the center, says Path. “The goal was to preserve a traditional, ethnic cheese and develop a safe manufacturing method we could share with small Wisconsin factories and farmsteads,” he says. The board, which supports the center, receives financial support from dairy farmers in the state.

Path, who has coordinated the project, traveled to northern Wisconsin, Michigan, Finland and Sweden to study the different manufacturing techniques and visit cheese factories and markets. These efforts paid off. Already Bass Lake Cheese in Somerset, Wis. is producing the cheese. Fennimore Cheese in Fennimore, Wis. and Springdale Cheese in Richland Center, Wis. have ordered ovens and plan to make juustoleipä.

On Sept. 24 and 25, the Center for Dairy Research hosted a seminar for about 28 Wisconsin cheesemakers and 10 Wisconsin master cheesemakers that included a hands-on demonstration of juustoleipä.

Juustoleipä is ideal for a small cheese factory, Path says, because a producer can bake only about 80 pounds of cheese in an oven at once. “It will be possible for people with small vats – that hold less than 15,000 pounds of milk – to become players,” he says. “We believe we will see quite a few start-ups.

“I tell people that this cheese may not be another mozzarella, which started as a specialty cheese and became widely popular, but it could become a well-represented specialty cheese like a Colby or a Monterey Jack,” Path adds. “We believe that this cheese with such a great past now has a great future in Wisconsin.”