Lyric Lewin | April 3, 2024 This article is from: Web Exclusive
Explore the process of creating supple and creamy lactic cheeses.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
It’s a drizzly gray day in the fall of 2019, yet everything remains picturesque in a way only a French landscape in the most abysmal of weather can manage to appear.
I’m in Soligny-la-Trappe, a small town in the Normandy region of France visiting my aunt, who lives here with her French husband and children. I’ve asked to meet the cheesemaker who created the most delicious goat cheese I’ve ever tasted.
Mylene Raoult is the woman behind this delicious cheese.
We drive up a gravel path to a stone house, a barn, bales of hay, goats, and a great deal of cheese. Mylene is standing near her goats preparing to milk them, speaking concisely (in French) to her assistant who leads the goats out of their pens and up a ramp to the milking platform. While hooked to machines, their beady eyes flit towards a trough of food intended to distract them from what’s going on near their hindquarters. Mylene works with deft precision as a half-smoked cigarette dangles from her lips. The fresh goats’ milk snakes its way up a pipe from the barn over a wall into the make room.
Both Mylene and her assistant, Vicki, start their work at the same time every day: one in the goat barn taking care of the animals and milking, and the other in the fromagerie, salting and turning wheels of cheese. Mylene takes care of paperwork and deliveries, and during kidding season, their work days can easily stretch to 14 hours.
Their hard work and dedication is worth it when you taste these supple and creamy, lactic cheeses. If traveling to the region, you can find her cheeses at the Abbey of La Trappe, the mini markets of Soligny, Crulai and Bazoches, the Gaec de l’Étoile in Courgeon, Super U in Mortagne, la Viennerie in Irai, Carrefour in Tourouvre and Coccinelle in Mortagne. Mylène also supplies cheese to Les Pieds dans l’eau restaurant in Mortagne.
The stone house on Mylene’s property.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Pictured are Mylene’s female goats or does. She has three male goats (bucks). Male goats are classed in France, and all her male goats have top class papers, selected for their high quality. Some goats produce milk with higher fat content, while others have greater supply, so she picks which goat is bred with which male based on the style of cheese she is hoping to produce.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Goats mature quickly—in one year, goats have already reproduced. After 5 years, if goats aren’t producing milk that meets Mylene’s high standards, she’ll sell them or give them away.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Goats are led to a trough to eat while they’re hooked up to machines to be milked.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Inside milking tubes are extra filtration pipes which ensure milk stays clean and can easily flow into buckets in the make room.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Mylene and Vicki replenish feed for the next batch of goats to be milked. In the French school system, students must decide at 16 years old what area of work they hope to specialize in. Mylene studied agriculture, specializing in animal husbandry, then received another diploma for working with cheese specifically.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Vicki adjusts the milking tubes on the machine that funnels the milk.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Milk is funneled through a large tube over this wall, which separates the parlor from the make room. It is then collected in a large bucket and may be mixed with milk from the day prior. Milk will remain in these collection buckets for 24 hours in order to curdle properly.
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This milk has begun curdling, and whey will be skimmed and disposed of. Mylene doesn’t use discarded whey for other purposes because she believes whey is too acidic. She will, however, scoop out some of the floating curds and put them in other batches of milk. This healthy bacteria gives her farmstead cheeses their unique terroir.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
In the morning, Mylene and Vickie pour curds from buckets into cylindrical forms. Later in the evening when they’ve properly set, they’ll flip them and add a hint of salt.
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Mylene or Vicki will rotate the cheese in their forms twice daily, salting each side and leaving them on the table (or grill) “to take air” for three or four days.
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Paper on top of the grill is changed, and turning the cheese back and forth allows each wheel to age evenly. When the rind is sturdy enough for transport, cheeses will move to the cold room.
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Cheese resting in the cold room.
Photo Credit: Lyric Lewin
Mylene uses black ash purely for aesthetics “to make it more beautiful.” She mentioned it doesn’t provide added flavor.
