Banon cheese is a soft, almost runny cheese that matures without a rind forming on it. The wheels are wrapped in chestnut leaves that have been soaked in brandy. The taste is like something between bacon and hay.
French Cheeses
Beaufort Cheese
Beaufort cheese is a semi-firm, smooth French cheese. One version is made in dairies; another is made in small farmhouses up in the alps. The colour depends on whether the cheese is made in summer or winter.
Bleu de Bresse
Bleu de Bresse (aka Bresse Bleu) is a milk blue cheese. It is made in cylinders weighing from 125 to 500 grams. Outside, it has a smooth, off-white rind similar to the rind on Brie and Camembert cheese. Inside, it is creamy and soft like Brie, almost spreadable, with patches of greenish-blue mould. It has…
Bleu de Gex
Bleu de Gex is a blue cheese made from the unpasteurized milk of Montbeliardes cows. The milk is heated to 80 F (27 C), Rennet is added, then the curds are cut to the size of small peas, and moulded. It is dry-salted over a period of 4 to 6 days. It can be ripened…
Bleu de Termignon
Bleu de Termignon is a blue cheese currently (2004) made by one woman with 9 cows in the French Alps. Her cows graze in the National Park of Vanoise. The cheese is not inoculated with a blue cheese mould, as other blue cheeses are. Rather, her cows pick up bacteria from other animals, which gets…
Bleu des Basques
Bleu des Basques is a semi-firm, slightly crumbly, blue cheese. It has bluish-grey veins, and a rind, and is milder and less salty than other blue cheeses.
Bleu des Causses
Bleu des Causses is a cow’s milk blue cheese. Inside, it is creamy but crumbly, with blue mould veins. It is is milder and less expensive than Roquefort cheese.
Boursin Cheese
Boursin cheese is a creamy, mild cheese made from pasteurized cow’s milk to which is added cream and seasonings. It is typically used as a snacking cheese but can also be used as an ingredient in cooking.
Brebis au piment d’Espelette
Brebis au piment d’Espelette is sheep’s milk cheese made with red pimento in it, and rubbed with pimento powder. The pimento taste comes through as lightly fruity rather than piquant.
Brebis de l’Abbaye de Belloc
Brebis de l’Abbaye de Belloc is a sheep’s milk cheese from the Basque area of France. As the cheese ages it takes on a stronger, caramelized flavour. You don’t eat the rind.
Brebis des Pyrénées Cheeses
Brebis des Pyrénées cheese is a generic term for cheeses made of sheep’s milk from the Pyrénées region in southern France. Brebis means a “female sheep”.
Brebis du Lochois
Brebis du Lochois is a soft sheep’s milk cheese from France. Its rind has a greyish-blue mould on it. It has a butterfat content of 45%.
Brebis Pardou
Brebis Pardou is French cheese made from the milk of béarnaise sheep. It has a brown crust on it.
Brie Cheese
Brie is a creamy French cheese popular for its smooth yet tangy, slightly acid taste and its woodsy smell. It is pale yellow inside with a crust like a soft white velvet. It can legally be made anywhere, by anyone.
Brie de Coulommiers Cheese
Brie de Coulommiers is a particular version of Brie cheese made in Seine & Marne, France. It has a more pungent smell than other Bries. It is often used as a breakfast cheese.
Brie de Meaux
Brie de Meaux is a Brie cheese made from raw cow’s milk. It is aged at least 4 weeks, developing a nutty flavour as it ages. The ones made in the fall are considered by some to be the best.
Brousse du Rove
Brousse du Rove is a fresh, unaged goat’s milk cheese. It is a very soft cream cheese that melts in your mouth. It is sold in cylinder shapes.
Brousse du Var
Brousse du Var is a fresh cheese made from sheep’s milk. It is meant to be sold on the same day it’s made. Customers used to bring their own containers to the cheese shops for the cheeses to be unmoulded into.
Camembert Cheese
Camembert is a mild, creamy cheese that is slightly salty. The outside crust may acquire a few splashes of red as it ages. The older the cheese is, the more runny it will be, but when it is too old, it develops an unpleasant ammonia smell.
Campénéac Cheese
Campénéac Cheese was a Port du Salut style cheese. It was very pliable with tiny holes. It had a very strong smell that belied its very mild taste. The nuns stopped making it in 1994.
Cantal Cheese
Cantal Cheese is a semi-firm cheese made from cow’s milk from up to three different breeds of cattle. There are both pasteurized milk and raw milk versions. Well-aged ones can be used for grating.
Chaource Cheese
Chaource is a tall, round brie-like double crème cheese. It has a mild taste with an acidic edge to it, and a slight mushroomy aroma.
Chèvre
Chèvre cheese is cheese made from goat’s milk. In particular, the term tends to indicate goat’s milk cheeses from France, or at least, made in a French style.
Chèvre Frais
Chèvre frais is a generic term for unaged French cheese made from pasteurized goat’s milk. Fresh goat’s cheeses don’t go stringy when heated; aged ones tend to.