Swiss Cheese - One Of The Prides Of Switzerland

Swiss cheese is famous around the world and for good reasons. If you are visiting the region around Lake Geneva and have enough time, I would like to suggest you visit the Demonstration Cheese Dairy in Gruyère, where the Gruyère cheese is produced. You will have the opportunity to watch the cheese making process at close range.

Swiss Cheese Recipes

Gruyère is one of about 450 types of cheese produced in Switzerland. These types differ in: kinds of milk, fat content, types of coagulation, water content, type of ripening and aroma.

The following types of cheese are produced in Switzerland: hard cheese, soft ripened cheese, cottage cheese, cheese from the Alps produced in Alpine cabins, big and small cheese dairies produce cheese in boxes, melted cheese and cheese in rosettes, cheese for fondues or a raclette to cover jacket potatoes ("G'schwellti").

It’s not only about holes in the cheese, there is much more to it, even if cheese production has not considerably changed over the past millennia, in spite of modern technologies used today that save the manufacturers a lot of manual work.

Cheese production still consists of 5 steps:

1. coagulation
2. curdling
3. heating, forming and salt baths
4. fermentation and ripening
5. quality control

Let me just mention in passing that I have spent many years abroad and that the product of my country of origin that I missed the most was good Swiss cheese.

Types Of Swiss Cheese

Extra hard and hard cheese

A typical extra hard cheese is the Sbrinz AOC, the Emmentaler AOC and the Gruyère AOC are probably the best known hard cheeses.

All these cheeses are made with untreated raw milk, contain at least 45% of fat when dry and have a long ripening period.

Sbrinz AOC must ripen for about 18 months to become edible and the full flavor develops after 2 to 3 years. Emmentaler AOC and Gruyère AOC can be consumed after 4 to 5 months and attain full ripening after 7 to 12 months.

Semi-hard cheese

They are either made of pasteurized milk or raw milk and ripen in 3 to 6 months.

Soft ripened cheese

Soft ripened cheese is usually made of pasteurized milk. Due to its water content of around 50% its ripening period of only a few weeks is rather short. Generally, you distinguish two types of soft ripened cheese.

• Soft cheese with mould (white mould cheese)Typical examples are Swiss Brie and Camembert or Tomme. Usually the white rind is eaten as well.

• Cream cheeseCream cheeses have no rind, are not ripened cheeses and can be consumed immediately after their production. They are made of pasteurized milk and have different levels of fat contents.

  The most popular types are “Quark” (curd cheese), cottage cheese, Formaggini, Mozzarella, Petit Suisse and specialties like cream cheese with up to 60 to 87 % of fat when dry (like Crème fraîche and Philadelphia).

Goat’s and sheep’s cheese

Goat’s and sheep’s cheese exist as soft and sliced cheese.

Goat’s milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk, due to its protein and fat structures.

Sheep’s milk contains large amounts of ortho acid that has extremely valuable characteristics for our health: it builds high quality proteins in the cell nucleus and therefore has a regenerative value particularly for aging people.

It also acts as a carrier substance for magnesium.

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