Author Topic: Crottin des Chavignol type cheeses  (Read 2842 times)

psearle

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Crottin des Chavignol type cheeses
« on: July 27, 2014, 05:01:31 PM »
Here is a picture of my attempt to reproduce Crottin des Chavignol with the milk from my goats.  The picture shows a cheese from each of three batches aged 3, 24 and 46 days old.  Note that I used different form factors for each batch so sizes are not comparable.

For each batch I used the recipe in "The Fabrication of Farmstead Goat Cheese" on 17 litres of pasteurised milk with 1/4 tsp of MA16 and 1/16 tsp of GEO 17 to assist ripening. 1/4 tsp of calcium chloride was added to each batch to compensate for pasteurising and I used 1.5 ml of rennet.  This makes about a dozen cheeses sized 5cm diameter by 6cm tall.

These taste lovely at 21 days but really come into their own at 6 weeks.  I'll certainly be making more! 

I've posted a question elsewhere asking for advice on using frozen curd for these but have not received any replies.  I froze 1kg of pre-drained curd from the last batch and will be trying to use this after a few weeks to see if I can crack the process for myself.  If I can then this will be a great way to even out my milk supply over the year.


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Re: Crottin des Chavignol type cheeses
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2014, 09:18:39 PM »
Hi there,

I hope this answers your question  (it seems that you can use frozen milk if you don't want to restrict your label to 'fermier')  ;)
http://www.sheridanscheesemongers.com/cheese/crottin-de-chavignol-fermier-aoc/

This fermier (farmhouse) goat’s cheese is made from raw milk in the Loire, not far from the celebrated wine-village of Sancerre. Dubois-Boulay are one of the three or four family owned affineurs dealing exclusively in Crottin de Chavignol. The production area for the cheese stretches from Sancerre to Berrichonne in Champagne, although the AOC states that all affinage must take place within a strictly delimited AOC area. For this reason there is a preponderance of producers but few affineurs. Dubois-Boulay alone deal with over 200 different cheesemakers. Although the AOC permits the use of frozen curds, a measure designed to ensure year round availability of goat’s cheese, the use of frozen curds is forbidden in cheeses labelled fermier.

Crottin de Chavignol AOC provides a textbook example of the manner in which a cheese can change with age. Furthermore, because the crottin is so small the changes take place over a far shorter length of time than they would for a large cheese such as Comté.
Dubois-Boulay describe four different stages of development in the cheese.

Demi-Sec: aged about 12 days. At this stage the cheese is just barely mature. Lactic flavours predominate and the crottin has yet to develop a real of complexity of flavour.

Bleuté: Aged about three weeks. A white penicillum rind is developing. With age an increasing amount of blue mould appears on the rind. The rind is developing a slightly mushroomy aroma. Inside the milky taste found in demi-sec crottins is replaced by  more robust, complex flavours.

Bleu: Aged 1-2 months. The rind is even more fully developed, and blue predominates. A deep goaty flavour is apparent. The cheese still maintains a sweetness but, due to the more developed rind, the crottin has a sharp aftertaste.

Très Sec: Aged two months plus. Appreciated by real fans of Crottin Chavignol. The paste is very brittle and dry, a flavour of hazelnuts has developed.

Dubois-Boulay advise that it is possible to keep the young cheese, wrapped in cheese paper, in the vegetable drawer of the fridge and age it over a few weeks or months.
The obvious, and classic pairing for this cheese is a Sancerre, white for the younger cheeses and red with the more mature.

www.dubois-boulay.fr

I made crottin from Mary Karlin's book with Oberhasli milk and only used P. candidum and Geo, as per her recipe, and loved it!  I'll have to try the blue version sometime too.

The solution I've found for too much milk is to make lots of aged cheeses, not limiting myself to those normally made from cow's milk only.  I've incorporated the general changes recommended for recipes calling for cow's milk, changed to goat's milk, as recommended by Margaret Peters-Morris:  decrease rennet by 20-25%, use temps at start and finish 2-3 degrees lower, cut curd slightly larger, handle curd very gently.

Cheers!
Kitren
before goats, store bought milk = chevre & feta, with goats, infinite possibilities, goatie love, lotta work cleaning out the barn!

psearle

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Re: Crottin des Chavignol type cheeses
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2014, 06:19:43 AM »
Hi Kitren

Thanks for all the information and especially for the links.

I make my cheeses in part with frozen milk because I only have a couple of milkers who give me 4-5 litres a day between them (in the summer) and my cheese vat is an electric bain marie with an absolute maximum capacity of 19 litres.  The frozen milk is never more than a couple of weeks old and a batch of cheese uses typically 13 litres of frozen milk (thawed gently overnight) and 4 or 5 litres from that morning and the previous evening.  This system works well for me.  Making a really aged cheese (say a 12 months matured cheddar) is difficult because the size of such a cheese is more than I can handle in my vat and, although I have excellent temperature control in my cheese "cave", humidity control is very hit and miss.

I also freeze cheese.  A matured tomme gets vacuum wrapped then put into the freezer for anything up to 6 months.  Finally, we also make some Pen Cand cheese based on a camembert recipe and freeze this when it has a good covering of mould but before it starts to soften.  If this is thawed gently then the ripening process will restart (after a couple of weeks delay) and the cheese develops normally.

What I was really after with freezing curds was to stop the process at a much earlier stage, in fact just after pre-draining the curds 24-36 hours into the "make".  The idea then would be to thaw the curds in a few months, pack them into moulds in the normal way and develop the cheeses from there.  I have read (but can't find the source again) that this is done commercially in France and was looking to see if anyone else had tried this and whether there was anything to do to optimise the process.  I saved 1kg of pre-drained curds from my last batch and will be experimenting with this.  I'll post results (good or bad) when I get them!

I'm guessing that you keep Oberhaslis?  They are really beautiful looking animals!  I've only seen one in the flesh when I was visiting my eldest son in Canada and helped one of his friends to show some of her goats (La Manchas and Saanens) at a local country show.  My goats are Golden Guernseys and I have them in my back yard so my "herd" consists of two adult does and whatever kids have been bred prior to selling them.  At the moment we have a couple of 3 month old kids (girl and castrated boy) and a 15 month doeling.

All the best

Peter

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Re: Crottin des Chavignol type cheeses
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2014, 07:13:21 PM »
Hi Peter,

From the little bit of research I've done, I'd guess that the more moisture (whey) left in the curds at freezing, the better the result--if so, predrained curd would be best.  I look forward to hearing the result of your test!

Yes, I've got Oberhasli--currently 5 milkers (2 are yearlings) give me 6-7 gallons daily.  I hate throwing any away, once the bottle-babies are weaned (they are on free-choice chilled milk so grow really fast), and we considered raising a couple of pigs yearly on the milk when I don't want to make cheese, but building an appropriate barn to sanitary standards in our climate (Central Sacramento Valley, California) would be outrageously expensive.  I alternate between 2 stockpot/double boilers that together hold 32 liters or a commercial buffet bain-marie that holds 28 liters.  I have, on rare occasions, used both at the same time, but then only one set-up goes to making pressed cheese and the other, generally, to gorgonzola.  BTW, gorgonzola might be an option for you as an aged cheese, since you create morning and evening curds separately.

Goldens are the rarest of the dairy breeds here and our association doesn't have a herd registry book for them--just too few.  I've never seen a Golden in the flesh, so you are one up on me.  I've got 3 adult bucks, 4 bucklings, 7 adult does and 7 doelings.  Attached are photos of one of my herd sires, a 2 yr old, and one of the yearling milkers.  I do love the look of the breed, but it was actually a disappointment to find their milk is so mild.  I prefer Togg milk's piquancy, and have found that the milk flavor doesn't change even housing the bucks alongside the does or when the does are fed strong veggies such as broccoli or turnips.

I'm currently working on flavor adjustment by starter and adjunct culture combinations, using Gouda as a 'white board', because Beemster Goat Gouda is one of my favorite cheeses and because there are a lot of research papers on flavor development in Gouda.

You must have a considerably larger backyard than most urban or suburban dwellers here--unless you are in the country, of course.  We have 20 acres, mostly leased for winter hay.  I'm currently working on updating my website (it's been 2 years and there's been substantial growth since then) -- check us out at www.caloakgoats.com

It's a small (goat owner) world, isn't it?

Best,

Kitren
before goats, store bought milk = chevre & feta, with goats, infinite possibilities, goatie love, lotta work cleaning out the barn!

psearle

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Re: Crottin des Chavignol type cheeses
« Reply #4 on: July 31, 2014, 11:44:59 AM »
Hi Kitren

I suspect that you’re right about the more whey left in the curds the better as far as freezing them is concerned.  I’ll just have to experiment and see what happens!  I have another 16 litres of pasteurised milk ready to go into the vat right now for another lactic batch and I’m torn between freezing half of the curd I produce or just greedily making as many crottins as I can!

Your set up sounds wonderful to me, that’s a lot of milk every day.  I know what you mean about not wanting to waste a drop; my wife makes yoghurt a couple of times a week, we have a lot of quiches in the summer and custard in the winter and we make quite a bit of goats’ milk soap which we sell.  The rest goes for cheese, which we can’t sell (too many regulatory hoops to jump through).  I’ve recently bought a cream separator and have hopes of using this to increase the richness of the milk for some cheeses and also to make butter which we can freeze for use throughout the year.

I’ve put a couple of photos of our goats below.  We produce a couple of kids each year (sometimes 4), sell the girls and eat the boys (we have no means of keeping bucks here).  The one exception to the boy rule was that we gave our first born lad (who was a very good looking kid) to a goaty friend and used him on our unrelated doe for several years.  Toby produced 18 registered progeny before being put down earlier this year and three of his registered sons have produced another 12 registered kids between them.  Considering that there are less than 1,000 Golden Guernseys all told we are pleased to be able to do our little bit for the breed.

Your Gouda experiments sound very interesting.  After an initial period of trying to make every cheese that had ever existed (and failing spectacularly on many occasions) I determined to make a small number of different cheeses that I enjoyed and that I could reproduce consistently.  The first of these was a Tomme and the second a goats’ milk Camembert.  We seem to have these sorted now and the move into Crottins and Chevrotins was an attempt to add to our repertoire.  I like the idea of Gorgonzola as we have not been very successful at the various blues we’ve tried to make (with the exception of a quite nice Cambozola). 

Our backyard is not very big, I’m afraid.  It’s about 35’ wide by 180’ long and the goats live at the far end in a 20’ by 10’ goat house with an attached paved exercise yard.  There is no grazing and the goats are fed on hay, browse from hedges which I cut and bring in, weeds and vegetables from the garden and some (very expensive) freeze dried grass for horses supplemented with grain as required.  When we visit our son in Canada the goats go “on holiday” to a hobby farm where they do get out to graze.

Look forward to browsing your website.  Ours is at www.cannards.co.uk and, again, hasn’t been updated for a couple of years (damn goats take up all the spare time!).  As you say, it's a small goaty world.  I hope I wont cause offence if I remark that every goat keeper I've ever met has been as mad as a fruit cake; it's why I feel at home in the goaty community!

All the best

Peter

The second photo is of Cannards Tobias (our Toby) and the first shows our herd on holiday in 2012 (left to right - Cannards Cara, Max, Cannards Coriander, Hadspen Tempest, Cannards Chloe and Cannards Cleopatra)
« Last Edit: July 31, 2014, 03:53:16 PM by psearle »