Features of making cheese Bren d'Amour. Calorie content and chemical composition, benefits and harms when consumed. What dishes can be cooked with sheep cheese, interesting facts about it.
Brenne d'Amour is a Corsican farmhouse soft cheese made from sheep's milk. The literal translation of the name is “a piece of love”. The second name of the product is Fleur du Maquis ("poppy flower" or "little Corsican"). The shape of the head is a flattened cylinder with a diameter of 10-12 cm and a height of 5 to 6 cm. Weight - 500-700 g. The duration of ripening varies from 1 to 3 months. During this time, the texture changes - from creamy pasty to soft elastic. Taste - creamy, spicy, with sourness; aroma - rich; the crust is thin, ivory, covered with a mixture of herbs - maskvis, juniper and rosemary, mixed with chili and salt. The smell is characterized as a bouquet of rotten meadow grass with walnut leaves.
How is Bren d'Amour cheese made?
This farm product is not produced in food factories. Cheese makers feed sheep's milk on their own or purchase it on the market. This explains the seasonality of production: sheep are not milked all year round, but only after lambing, in the spring and summer period. The taste largely depends on what the animals are fed with. From 3 liters of raw materials get 250-300 g of the final product.
Each dairy has its own recipe for how to make Brenne d'Amour cheese, and the secret is carefully guarded. General processes:
- Collection, cooling of whole sheep milk and heating to 30-32 ° С. This is the optimum temperature for fermentation with mesophilic cultures.
- For coagulation, rennet is used, but not veal, but mutton. Calcium chloride is used as a preservative at this stage.
- It takes 4-8 hours to form a kalya. When the curd layer can be raised without kinks by 30 ° and, when cut, you get a straight line that immediately fills with whey, you can start cutting the curd grain. All this time, maintain a constant temperature.
- Stir the grains until they are reduced by 2 times and acquire a rounded shape. Then they are allowed to settle.
- Then you can make Brenne d'Amour cheese, like other hard varieties, by pressing the curd mass into special molds with small holes. But some cheesemakers, in order to speed up the removal of whey, first wrap the compacted grain in a cloth and hang it for several hours.
- When the serum is drained, heads are formed and oppression is established. Turn over every 40-90 minutes.
- Then carry out salting, drying at room temperature for 1-1, 5 days.
The next stage determines the taste of Brenne d'Amour - it is covered with a mixture of herbs. The dried plants are mixed with crushed roasted chili peppers and salt, and then the dried heads are rolled in them. The composition of the breading varies. It necessarily includes rosemary, maskvis and juniper berries, but sometimes the mixture is supplemented with thyme, fennel and even dill.
Some farmers use blue mold to make the variety. It is introduced together with the leaven. In this case, before being placed in a ripening chamber (temperature 8-12 ° C, humidity 90-93%), punctures are made in the heads with thin needles so that the cheese “breathes” and mold cultures develop.
Ripening of the farm product lasts 1-3 months. It is sold at all stages of ripening - with a soft creamy pulp and a hard crumbling texture.
Composition and calorie content of Bren d'Amour cheese
The energy value of the variety is high, like all fermented milk products made from sheep's milk. Fat content of the product on dry matter - 45%.
The calorie content of Bren d'Amour cheese is 451 kcal per 100 g, of which:
- Protein - 28 g;
- Fat - 38 g;
- Carbohydrates - 1, 4 g.
The product contains vitamins E, PP and D, B2, B3, B5, folic acid, cyanocobalamin. Most of all vitamin A - 29% of the total composition. The predominant minerals are calcium - 32%, iron - 18%. High content of phosphorus and magnesium, small amounts of selenium, zinc, manganese, cobalt and molybdenum.
Useful and harmful effects on the body are provided by essential and non-essential amino acids, fatty acids - saturated, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated, as well as cholesterol (110 mg per 100 g).
Brenne d'Amour cheese contains whole sheep milk, rennet, mesophilic ferment, salt, pepper and spices. No artificial preservatives or flavors are used in the manufacture.
Useful properties of Bren d'Amour cheese
Calcium and phosphorus in this fermented milk product is 3 times more than in varieties made from cow's milk, and the herbs that cover the crust give additional medicinal properties.
Benefits of Bren d'Amour cheese:
- Thanks to B vitamins and rosemary, which is used to cover the crust, regular consumption improves performance and memory function, normalizes the state of the nervous system, prevents the development of insomnia, soothes and eliminates agitation.
- This product can be eaten by people who are allergic to cow's milk. After fermentation, casein from sheep's milk is easily absorbed by the body and stimulates the synthesis of its own protein.
- Strengthens muscle tissue and helps strength athletes to shape biceps of the desired volume.
- Do not be afraid of the development of atherosclerosis. The composition contains not only a high amount of cholesterol, but also a lot of fatty acids, which accelerate the dissolution of this substance and have a positive effect on the state of blood vessels.
- Stops osteoporosis and prevents the appearance of degenerative-dystrophic changes in the skeletal system, improves the production of synovial fluid.
- Accelerates the regeneration of epithelial tissues and mucous membranes lining the digestive organs.
- Creates favorable conditions for the development of intestinal flora, increases the rate of peristalsis, has an antioxidant effect.
- Stimulates the production of intestinal enzymes and hydrochloric acid, increases appetite. Helps to recover in a short time with iron deficiency anemia. Prevents the development of thrombocytopenia and leukopenia.
- Normalizes protein-lipid metabolism, increases the tone of the vascular walls.
- Possesses immunomodulatory properties.
- Regulates acid-base balance, increases the metabolism of folic acid.
- Improves the quality of hair and nails, increases the strength of dental tissue and stops the development of caries.
Since the heating of the feedstock is not carried out, the decomposition of nutrients does not occur, and they are assimilated in full.
