Vermont Creamery Bijou
- Pasteurized
- Microbial Rennet
- Age: 2 Weeks
- Goat Milk
- by Vermont Creamery
- United States
- ApproachableAdventurous
- SoftHard
The 'jewel' of Vermont, the Bijou is a classic French Crottin made that gives the local goat's milk the royal treatment. Curd is ladled by hand, allowed to coagulate overnight, and slowly drains in cheese cloth. When these little buttons of cheese are allowed to ripen, each is uniquely sweet and yeasty, with a sharp complexity that arises from a few more weeks of aging. These little gems start off creamy, but become deliciously oozy with a little age, and become the perfect topping to a toasty baguette. A pint of Belgian Tripel brings out that baked bread notes, and the cheese brings out a tangy freshness unlike any other.
Allergens: Milk
- Bijou’s iconic wrinkled rind comes from the natural mold, called Geotrichum candidum, that is often used to ripen delicate small format goat cheeses.
- After culturing, the milk is allowed to ripen for twenty-four hours before the curd is drained overnight in cheesecloth. The following day, the young Bijou is formed and transferred to a drying room for twenty-four hours before moving to the main maturing room.
- This cheese is inspired by Crottin de Chavignol, a chevre, or young goat cheese made in the Loire Valley.
Murray’s Cheese has a longstanding history with Vermont Creamery—and was one of its very first customers.
Vermont Creamery was founded by Allison Hooper and Bob Reese in 1984. Reese, working at Vermont’s Department of Agriculture, was in search of a fresh goat cheese that would complete the menu for a dinner that celebrated Vermont-made products. So, he turned to Hooper, an employee at a local dairy lab who learned to make cheese while interning on a farm in Brittany, France.
Vermont Creamery began as a farmstead operation with just 60 goats; it now spans a network of over twenty family farms across Vermont and Canada.
Vermont Creamery is committed to consciously crafted dairy and was awarded B-Corp certification in 2014 in recognition of its shared mission to use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.
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