Lactic and goat styles
Valencay, Crottin, Sainte-Maure: slow-set, often goat, often ashed, in logs, buttons and pyramids.
Lactic cheeses are set slowly by acid more than by rennet. Milk with a little starter and a drop of rennet is left for about a day until it forms a soft, tangy curd, which is ladled into small moulds. The result is fine-grained and bright. Most of the classics are goat's milk cheeses from the Loire and the centre of France: Valençay, Crottin de Chavignol, Sainte-Maure de Touraine and Selles-sur-Cher.
A slow curd
In a lactic set the acid does most of the work. The curd forms over roughly a day at a cool room temperature and is fragile, closer to set yoghurt than to the firm curd of cheddar. It is ladled gently into moulds for logs, buttons, pyramids or discs and drains for a day or two. The cheeses may then be dusted with salt mixed with vegetable ash and left to grow a thin rind, often of the yeast-like Geotrichum candidum, which wrinkles the surface like the folds of a brain, along with soft blue-grey moulds.
Shapes and ash
Shape is often a cheese's signature. Valençay is a pyramid with its top cut off, and a story often told says the top was removed after Napoleon's campaign in Egypt. Sainte-Maure de Touraine is a log with a rye straw through its centre to hold it together, and the straw is marked with the cheese's name. Crottin de Chavignol is a small drum that hardens and darkens with age. The ash, once charcoal from burnt vine shoots and now food-grade vegetable charcoal, helps the rind form and gives the grey look.
Beyond the Loire
Cheesemakers in Britain and North America have taken up the method. Humboldt Fog from California carries a line of ash through its middle, and English farms make small ashed goat cheeses in the French way. Cow's milk lactic cheeses exist too: Saint-Marcellin, from the Dauphiné, was once made from goat's milk and is now made from cow's milk, soft enough when ripe to eat with a spoon. Spain, Greece and the Middle East have goat cheeses of their own made by different methods.
Worth knowing
- Valençay: Ashed goat's milk pyramid with a flat top
- Crottin de Chavignol: Small goat drum from near Sancerre
- Sainte-Maure de Touraine: Ashed log with a rye straw through its heart
- Selles-sur-Cher: Ashed goat's milk disc of the Loire
- Pouligny-Saint-Pierre: Tall, narrow goat's milk pyramid
- Saint-Marcellin: Small soft round of the Dauphiné
- Humboldt Fog: Californian goat cheese with a line of ash
Good to know
- Eat young lactic cheeses within a few weeks; aged crottins grow firm and strong.
- Store them in a box with a loose lid so the rind can breathe.
- Warm crottin on toast with salad is a French bistro classic.
Sources and further reading
- Goat cheese on Wikipedia
- Valençay cheese, Wikipedia
- Sainte-Maure de Touraine, Wikipedia
- Crottin de Chavignol, Wikipedia
Original text by the EveryCheese desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Customs are described as tradition, not as advice. If we have something wrong, tell us.
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