This firm, half-inch-thick slab has brown spots on it from baking. The vendors cut up their “Brun-Uusto” and its flavored varieties for samples, dump the cubes on a large griddle to fry, and move them to sample trays when they’ve browned enough. Cue the cheese-stabbing masses.
Slightly dense and mild in flavor, juustoleipä squeaks in your teeth like a fresh cheese curd when cool, but fries up to a golden-brown color without melting into a puddle. The frying caramelizes the exterior a bit more, and makes the cheese softer, with some added creaminess.
Years ago when I first tried it, I reported the experience to my grandmother, a child of Finnish immigrants who once lived on a farm in northern Wisconsin. “Have you ever heard of this Finnish cheese? I just had some!” I told her, and she waved it off, unimpressed. “My mother used to make that all the time in the oven.” Wait, what? Why am I always the last to know this stuff?
Pilgrimage to Suomi
In 2017 on a trip to meet my Finnish cousins, I ate the cheese with family. In stores I saw it labeled leipajuusto (bread cheese), so I asked my cousin Irene about the discrepancy.“Juusto as such means cheese, and leipa means bread. The two ways to name it are as controversial as ever. Leipajuusto is more of a national name, but we in Southern Kuusamo and Kainuu call it juustoleipa,” she told me. “There are as many experts as there are Finns, I expect. We think we are right, of course, because it is like a bread made of cheese so that makes it juustoleipa.” Fortunately, that’s also how we have it in Wisconsin, so no conflicts there.
Irene cut a small wheel of it into cubes, and I was prepared to pop the room temperature cheese into my mouth and enjoy the squeak. But to my surprise, she poured out cups of hot coffee for everyone and dropped a few cubes into each, warming the cheese and giving the coffee a very slight buttery quality. The rest we ate with cloudberry jam on it.
Wisco Juusto
With the abundance of Finnish immigrants across northern Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, it’s no surprise juustoleipa has resurfaced in this area. While homemade varieties have become increasingly rare with the passing of generations, professional cheesemakers have effectively taken up the mantle.
According to Sid Cook, the owner and award-winning master cheesemaker of Carr Valley, juustoleipa, which they call simply bread cheese, has become one of their top sellers. Carr Valley also sells flavored versions, such as garlic, jalapeño, bacon, and chipotle, as well as a variety made with goat’s milk.
Cook credits the style’s popularity to its versatility: “Creative professionals and home chefs are finding ways to take it to another level, such as frying it and serving it with marinara for a gluten-free replacement to the mozzarella stick, grilling it for vegetarian kabobs, serving it with maple syrup or honey for a sweet-savory combination, or even making cheese ‘croutons’ to top soups and salads.”
The traditional cheese was homemade and baked in a wood-fired oven, as my great-grandmother used to do. The resulting cheese might have lasted seven days. But the commercially packaged cheese has a longer shelf life and better shippability.
Says Cook, “Perfecting the process took a lot of experimenting as well as working with the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I’ve always believed cheese making is 50 percent science and 50 percent art.”
Homemade Juustoleipa
If you don’t want to send away for it, cook up your own juustoleipa. If one could make this cheese in an hour in a wood stove in a kitchen without modern conveniences, you can imagine this is a DIY-friendly creation. This recipe, adapted from the already simple instructions at New England Cheesemaking Supply Co., should get you there.- 2 gallons milk
- 1 teaspoon rennet
- 1 tablespoon cornstarch
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 tablespoon sugar
Place the curd into a round, 10-inch-diameter, 2-inch-deep pan and broil in the oven for about 20 minutes or until browned. Remove from the oven and let it cool enough that you can turn it over into the pan and broil the other side until it too browns.
Cut into narrow slices like pie, or cube it for your coffee.
