Meet The Blue Jay - a quintuple crème blue cheese from Deer Creek Cheese in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Made by adding crushed juniper berries and five 10-gallon cans of cream to each vat, The Blue Jay is a decadently creamy yet bold-flavored blue with a piney bouquet, a satiny texture, and a smooth finish. This impressive American original was the gold medal winner for blue-veined cheese at the L.A. International Dairy Competition, and it's a highly craveable favorite of cheese lovers everywhere.
Founded in 2006 by Chris and Julie Gentine, Deer Creek Cheese began by producing hand-selected aged cheddars in partnership with Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Kerry Henning of Henning's Cheese. However, Chris, a cheese grader, and Julie, a culinary explorer, soon began exploring ideas for cheeses of their own. The Blue Jay was created with the help of Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Sid Cook of Carr Valley Cheese. Deer Creek Cheese products start with milk from small, local Wisconsin family farms where the landscape offers the herds lush summer grazing, sweet winter feed, and fresh, limestone-filtered water. This environment enables Deer Creek Cheese to produce award-winning, creative cheeses like The Night Walker, a bandage-wrapped cheddar bathed in bourbon, and The Wild Boar cheese, a handcrafted monterey jack cheese infused with black truffle.
The innovation that Deer Creek Cheese brings to The Blue Jay is a hallmark of Wisconsin cheese. We've been making cheese in Wisconsin since before we were even a state, and our makers have perfected Old World recipes while constantly exploring new cheesemaking frontiers. In our cheese shops and grocery stores, along with The Blue Jay, you'll find cheeses like fresh mozzarella ciliegine from Crave Brothers Farmstead Cheese, Sartori merlot cheese, Luna cheese from Hill Valley Dairy, and dill Havarti from Roth Cheese.
The Blue Jay is made by adding five 10-gallon cans of cream to a vat of pasteurized cow's milk that is cultured with mold. Cheesemakers then infuse the milk with crushed juniper berries, which release their perfume to add a delicate, piney botanical bouquet to the curd. After it's poured into a mold and left to age for 3 to 4 months, the cheese ripens to the texture of crème brûlée, while the mold in the milk flourishes to create pockets and veins of blue flavor.
Penicillium roqueforti is a mold or filamentous fungi that is used in the production and aging of cheese. This special mold provides the pockets and veins of blue-green mold that give a cheese like The Blue Jay its bold, tangy flavor. As one of 300 types of mold in the Penicillium group, Penicillium roqueforti has adapted to live in high-salt, high-fat, protein-intense environments, making it perfect for use in cheese.
In France, culinary regulations define a double-crème cheese as a product in which extra cream is added to the milk before it forms curds to create a cheese with a minimum of 60% butterfat content in the dry matter. A triple-crème cheese has a minimum of 75% fat content in the dry matter. For The Blue Jay, the quintuple-crème designation is more of a play on words, referring to the five large cans of cream that are added to pasteurized cow's milk, giving The Blue Jay roughly 70 to 75% butterfat.
Like most blue cheeses, The Blue Jay pairs nicely with stronger, off-dry beverages with a bit of flavor. A crisp hard cider complements The Blue Jay beautifully, as do amber ales, bocks, and fruit beers. A hazy, fruity New England IPA will offer a nice contrast to the fatty mouthfeel of the cheese. For wine, a fizzy champagne or a cava will do the same. Alternately, bold and fruity wines like zinfandel, malbec, sweet Bordeaux-style whites, or dessert wines will match the flavor profile of The Blue Jay. For spirits, the piney notes of The Blue Jay are a perfect match for a gin martini. A bold, nutty sake gets on brilliantly with The Blue Jay, too.
The incredible flavor and texture of The Blue Jay make it an exciting addition to pastas, thick-cut steaks, lamb burgers, and game meats like venison. For an appetizer, try topping some juicy heirloom tomato slices with bits of crumbled bacon and a dressing made with The Blue Jay cheese.
On a charcuterie spread, cheese board, or grazing table, The Blue Jay cheese pairs beautifully with thinly sliced pears, lemon curd, rosemary crisps, mission figs, fresh raspberries and blackberries, hot pepper jam, candied walnuts, and whole grain crackers.
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Blue cheese is made by adding Penicillium mold to the milk before it is curdled. After adding rennet to coagulate the cheese, the curd is loosely packed into molds, leaving enough space within the curd to encourage the mold to grow and spread. Once the cheese has aged for several weeks, cheesemakers create channels in the cheese by piercing it with needles or rods, oxygenating the mold inside the cheese to support its growth. These channels become the blue-green streaks and veins that are the essence of blue cheese.
Blue cheese is made by adding Penicillium roqueforti mold to the milk curd during the cheesemaking process. Different strains of this Penicillium mold produce veins of different colors from green to blue.
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