A few nights ago, on my drive home from my once-a-week Tuesday gig in Waco, Texas, it occurred to me how ridiculous the lengths to which I had gone to be a productive member of cheese society seemed. At 10 p.m. I was on a desolate stretch of West Texas highway pushing hour-five of my 5.5-hour commute. This would be like living at my parents house in Omaha, bored and tired of wearing clothes that smelled like my mother's curry, and suddenly announcing "what say I drive on down to Wichita for my part-time job at Boeing today." Even more ridiculous is the thought that if I worked in New York City part-time and lived in DC for a lower cost of living, the commute with normal traffic would be about the same as or less than what I was doing now.
Maybe because of my nomadic, living-out-of-my-car, lifestyle, I had misjudged the substantial size of this kind of mileage. After all, I was the only one who seemed unphased by the feat of my weekly trek. I quickly consoled myself, realizing that this drive wouldn't be worthwhile just to kill time at any old bootleg cheese operation. Sure it beats sitting around in the afternoon watching Leprechaun: Back 2 the Hood on cable television and feeling IQ points quietly slip away. But more importantly, the drive is reasonable for the value I get in exchange: a sense of worth in a job I love and in a field I'm proud to make my life. I got lucky once again and found a wonderful cheesemaker to work with.
My first day at Brazos Valley Cheese was a couple weeks ago. Somehow my mere six months of experience gave them the impression that I knew what I was doing. Right from the start Rebeccah, the head cheesemaker, put me in charge of my own mini batch of brie. She showed me where to find equipment and cultures and how to heat the vat. Other than periodically answering my questions about the recipe and where to find things, I was set loose on my own.
Brie is a cheese I had never made before. The cheese room has a large vat and a small vat. My batch was in the small vat, so the potential for disaster would only affect 50 gallons of milk -- only mildly reassuring. The milk is brought in from an outside source every morning by others, so I don't bother with the mechanics of pumping the milk. Plus, there's always extra muscle to help with cutting and hooping. So honestly, supervising my own batch does not make me any kind of cheese badass. Most everything is spelled out in their recipe. I simply watch the temperature, add the correct amount of cultures and rennet per the recipe, periodically check the pH and stir. After hooping, I watch the time for flipping, flip, and with this particular batch of brie, sprinkle vegetable ash in the center. If I hadn't figured out these basics by this point, I would make a far worse cheesemaker than I was lawyer. And that is a dismal thought. Yet, having someone set me loose on their product and so quickly trust my abilities, basic as they might be, made me feel like I had actually reached the point of being worthy of the job title, cheesemaker.
I was also encouraged to chime in with any suggestions I might have on methods and techniques based on my experience. This request came on the heels of a friend from cheese school calling me to look for advice on washing a washed-rind cheese he was developing. What alternative universe was I in? When the hell did I go from someone who just liked melting piles of cheese on everything I ate to being a source for cheesemaking advice?! This feels different. I was hesitant to adjust someone's long-standing methods by introducing my own style of, say, hand-salting or hooping. But my confidence received a boost knowing that at least a couple things I mentioned were well-received and potentially helpful...or else they were just being really nice to me. Either way, win for my ego!
Despite having developed some knowledge about the craft, there are still techniques and cheeses I've never experienced. My newest cheese job is also providing me with learning opportunities, such as wrapping my first wheel of cloth-bound cheddar. Aging the wheel in cloth, as opposed to letting a natural rind develop in the open-air, provides a different flavor profile in cheddar. To bind the wheels they are wrapped in several pieces of cotton muslin, which are adhered to the wheel with vegetable shortening. Maybe I just really like dumping my hands in a tub of Crisco, but I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I've never worked with brie or mozzarella before, so I have volumes to learn there. I'm also continually learning more about the science of the cheesemaking process from Rebeccah and her crew: pH levels, aging temperatures, what have you.
Let's not forget, I'm a fatty, and I couldn't be more pleased that they treat me to lunch at their community's cafe. I mentioned before that the cheesemakers are a self-sustaining homesteading community, which opens itself and its crafts to the public for visits, classes and purchase. Everything at the cafe is freshly made using their own beef, veggies, and homemade bread. Best food in Waco!!...for what that's worth to any of you.
In the Meantime: In Search of Something Cheesy
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| No cheese, but plenty of natural beauty |
I started emailing cheesemakers and cheese stores in (relatively) nearby and bigger Texas cities. The response rate was low. Most that did respond didn't have any open positions. The response from one cheesemaker in Waco was promising. I soon thereafter arranged a follow-up visit with them on my way up north to visit friends and family in the Midwest. On the same trip, I arranged to visit a cheesemonger in Dallas who didn't have any open positions on staff but was kind enough to speak with me anyway. Like I've always said, unlike legal "networking," cheese "networking" is actually enjoyable and not at all humiliating. On the way, I also made a point to pop into Whole Foods, Central Markets, and cheese stores in Dallas and Austin with a more personal employment inquiry.
My first stop was Brazos Valley Cheese (BVC) in Waco. I had heard of a few of their cheeses through the ACS awards, where they placed in a couple categories. I had never tried their cheese. Actually, I had never tried any Texas cheesemakers' cheeses. The BVC cheesemakers are part of a larger self-sustaining craft community, which includes services such as a blacksmith, pottery studio, grist mill, and cafe. They offer classes to the public in these and many other skilled trades. I got the grand tour and sampled several of their delicious freshly-made food stuffs...including handmade ice cream, which remains the fastest way to win me over. Still, when I described the opportunity to others, and the words "Waco, Texas" and "self-sustaining agrarian religious community" were placed in combination, it elicited some understandably curious reactions and half-joking queries regarding stereotypical media images. I know what you're thinking, but there is no such thing as a cheese cult. Though I could see myself starting one. Everyone was very kind and I enjoyed the cheese I tasted. I was surprised to hear that nobody had ever asked to come on staff and help out with cheesemaking. I actually discovered in my searching process that most Texas cheesemakers didn't have a hiring or internship program. The cheese scene was growing but relatively new here, and cheesemakers seemed used to doing it on their own. BVC, however, seemed receptive to my help. A part-time opportunity that would allow me to go back and forth from Del Rio was available to me if I could manage the driving. More on that soon.
I checked in with larger chains that have full cheese counters like Whole Foods to no avail. If it wasn't posted on their online job bank, it didn't exist. Cheese stores, likewise, were fully staffed. Nevertheless, I enjoyed scoping out the cheese store scene here. If Cheesy Street were to open in Texas in one of many potential business models I have schemed up, I started to get an idea of what would work and where. First, direct cheese retail competition with the bigger natural foods chain stores like Whole Foods and Central Market seems rough here. Their cheese counters are baller. The natural food stores with which I'm familiar never had cheese counters that could be their own free-standing cheese store like the ones here. As for free-standing cheese stores, Antonelli's in Austin and Scardello's in Dallas are amazing. Both had a great selection and friendly, helpful cheesemongers. They have now been added to my list of cheese store heroes. In any city where my cheese heroes exist, I would have a hard time opening up anything unless we could all be friends. A non-competitive spirit might be my downfall in business.
Mozzarella Company in Dallas is probably the most well-known and highly regarded cheesemaker in Texas. They have many non-mozzarella style cheeses, but the mozzarella itself is amazing. It's so rich and creamy that I've never felt so guilty eating mozzarella. I decided to check out their store to discover it's not really a store at all. It's just a small room with a cooler full of cheese and a viewing area of their production room. Making cheese there seemed just as awesome as selling their cheese. Unfortunately, staff turnover is almost nonexistent. I was told most of their cheesemakers had been there for decades.
While it seemed next to impossible to get anyone in this state to let me help make or sell cheese, I had a wonderful time making the rounds and starting to re-establish my cheese knowledge.
There was only one major fail: a cheese store in Dallas that shall remain nameless. I'll just say it was in an area of town that upon driving into, I knew before even seeing the shop that it would not be the right fit for me. The store itself was across the way from a Jimmy Choo store and down the street from SMU (where rich kids keep it classy). My car was the most busted looking thing in a two mile radius. I suspected the clientele would fill me with throat-punching frustration on a daily basis. Let's be real, I'm not gonna hate on money. Sure my dirty, road warrior CR-V could eat your stupid Lexus SUV for dinner. But some disposable income is necessary to buy artisanal cheese and for a cheese store to survive. And, sure, I'd like to be able to afford a nice house someday too. Yet, the complete sterility of the place was discomforting. Upon walking into the store, I was not greeted with the same warmth as I get in most other great cheese stores. The display and selection was depressing. It was obvious that shopping for a $400 shirt was the main goal of the retail area. Cheese was just an afterthought. Anything European seemed fancy enough for this place to survive with its customers I suppose. I entered, not wanting to judge a book by its cover, but left even more disappointed than I had expected. It was the type of store that makes artisanal cheese experimentation seem like a useless and snobbish exercise to cheese lovers and cheese novices alike. Promptly casting aside all pretensions, I used the application to pick a feather, which must have drifted off some roadkill on my long journey, out of my outcast-car's grill. The diseased-looking scrap and application thereafter went in the trash.
It became quickly apparent that I would have to find a way to self-educate while in Del Rio and make multi-hour trips to buy cheese or make cheese commercially. I'm okay making some adjustments to get things done. And, it turns out, I'm starting to really like long-distance driving (cheese trucking business here I come). In the meantime, I just received some home cheesemaking supplies in the mail! Here's to hoping that in search of something cheesy I don't make all our furniture smell like spoiled milk....
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