I bet when I say French cheese the last one you think about is Fromage Blanc. Am I right? Honestly the only reason I thought I’d make Fromage Blanc was because I wanted to make Flammekueche. More on that later. I mean, white cheese. Boring! Non, mesdames et messieurs. Ok, Fromage Blanc doesn’t have a deep flavour. It’s mild but it does have a little tang. It’s a cultured cheese. And no, I don’t mean all hoity-toity. It has had bacteria added which devour the lactose in the milk to produce lactic acid giving the cheese its acidity and flavour. This is the fresh stuff! It’s not cured like most cheeses so don’t age it—it goes bad.

Made from cow’s milk or cream, Fromage Blanc is creamy soft and spreadable, and comes in different consistencies depending on how it will be used. It’s certainly versatile—just look how the Americans bake with their version. Pure Fromage Blanc is virtually fat free. Buy it off the shelf though and it’s likely to have had cream added to enhance the flavour, which also increases the fat content. Not a bad thing per se. Alas no supermarket shelf in the UK has French Fromage Blanc on it. Booo! And I didn’t want to use a crappy substitution like quark or cottage cheese in my Flammekueche so I decided to make my own Fromage Blanc. I had to make the dough anyway so I figured it’d be fun to make the cheese from scratch too. Easy cheesy.

Ingredients

2L whole milk
0.5g mesophilic culture or 1 sachet from Mad Millie.
0.75tsp citric acid

Method

1. Gently warm the milk to 24C.

2. Remove the milk from the heat and sprinkle over the mesophilic culture. Let it dissolve into the milk for 3 minutes. Gently whisk to thoroughly incorporate the culture.

3. Now sprinkle over the citric acid and gently incorporate using a maryse spatula with up and down strokes. Don’t overdo it.

4. Clingfilm over the top of the pan and leave to culture for 14 to 16 hours at room temperature, ideally 22C.

5. The cheese should now look like yogurt; solid if tipped but softish. Whey may be separating from the cheese.

6. Place a large piece of fine-meshed cheese cloth in a sieve sitting over a bowl. Carefully ladle the Fromage Blanc into the cloth.

Ladle the Fromage Blanc into a cheesecloth in a sieve sitting over a bowl

7. Pull up the corners of the cloth and gather together. Secure with some string.

8. Hang over a bowl and let the whey drain for 6 to 12 hours, depending on how firm you want your Fromage Blanc. I left mine for 6 hours.

Let the whey drain from the Fromage Blanc for at least 6 hours

8. At this point you can fold in herbs or sea salt if you want. I kept mine plain because I had a couple of recipes in mind. Also, if you’ve opted for a firmer cheese, place the Fromage Blanc—still in the cheese cloth—into a shaping basket and gently press. Mine was just firm enough to shape and turn out, that is until I poked it. You can see it’s lovely and gooey at the centre. Mmm. A nifty option for a very firm version is to roll the Fromage Blanc in herbs—flavour and looks!

9. The Fromage Blanc will keep in the fridge for a week. Apparently it can be frozen but first salt it well then press it again to remove as much whey as possible.

So Flammefuche. Flame cake baby! Chef made Flammekueche at Le Cordon Bleu but I first encountered something very similar in Austria, called Flammkuchen. Basically it’s a bread dough rolled thinly and covered with Fromage Blanc, onions and lardons. Of course Le Cordon Bleu’s version enriched the topping by combining Fromage Blanc, double cream and crème fraîche. Farmers in Alsace and the border regions between France and Germany baked bread once a week and used Flammekueche to test the heat of their wood-fired ovens. At optimum temperature, embers were pushed aside to make room for the bread and the intense heat would bake it in 1 or 2 minutes. There would be a crispy bottom and flame-licked onions and blackened crust. I bottled it and pulled my Flammekueche out of the oven too early. More colour, more crisp next time please.

What to do with the leftover Fromage Blanc? I had about half left. Hmm. A bit of research later and Tarte au Fromage Blanc was on the menu. I’ve always been ambivalent about baked cheesecakes but I was chuffed how this one came out. And with a lovely glass of sweet wine it disappeared pretty quickly.