Brick cheese

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About Brick cheese
Wikipedia Article About Brick cheese on Wikipedia

Brick cheese is Wisconsin cheese made in brick-shaped form. The color ranges from pale yellow to white, and the cheese has a sweet and mild flavor when young, and improves to a strong ripe cheese with age. It is medium-soft, crumbles easily and is somewhat sticky to the knife. Brick cheese is well-suited to slicing for sandwiches or appetizers and also melts well. Served with corn polenta in the Midwest, where the brick cheese is thinly sliced and caused to melt underneath the polenta and tomato sauce topping.

The name of this all-American Wisconsin cheese is said to have come from the fact that bricks were once used to weight the curd and press out the whey; it's also brick shaped. Pale yellow and semisoft, brick cheese has a mild, earthy flavor when young. As it ripens, however, it becomes almost as strong as limburger.

Brick cheese is made in the form of a large brick, but may also be named "brick" cheese because the cheese was originally pressed with bricks. Widmer's Cheese cellars in Theresa, Wisconsin utilizes real bricks to press their cheese today.

Brevibacterium linens grows on the surface of brick cheese and is surface-ripened. Brevibacterium linens is also the bacteria responsible for the aging of Limburger cheese and many French cheese varieties. Cheesemakers often refer to the growth of the bacteria as a schmear. The cheese is placed on wooden shelves, then gets washed with a whey and water mixture and turned. After several days the cheese is then packaged.

The US Code of Food Regulations defines what the fat and moisture content of brick cheese must be. This Standard of Identity does not take into account that brick cheese should be surface ripened with "B. linens".