Daily News | This rich, oozing, Lehigh Valley cheese has peak farmstead flavor
Steve Dougherty says he’s more into “corny dad jokes” than social commentary when it comes to naming his cheeses. But meme aficionados should at least be able to more or less date the creation of “OK Bloomer.” The bloomy rind square of soft-ripened cheese that Dougherty makes atin New Tripoli, Pa.
Dougherty, 41, straddles the Gen X-Millennial divide, but had recently made a major lifestyle shift of his own, moving back to Kutztown from Orange County, Calif., and leaving his desk job as a nonprofit project manager to embrace a career in cheese. He partnered with farmer Reuben DeMaster, of, and the two invested in a “misfit herd” of 20 Guernsey, Hereford and Jersey cows to graze 20 acres of grass near the Lehigh Valley’s wine country.
But the softer, bloomy rind OK Bloomer is the one I keep coming back for. American versions of the brie and camembert styles, with some notable exceptions, have typically been either plasticky and bland, or overly runny and too quickly funky. Haven hits an ideal middle place with OK Bloomer. The perfectly aged square I recently purchased at the Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market was glossy, ripe and densely creamy all the way through, with a well-tempered savory length due to its early bath in brine.
As with the best farmstead cheeses, the quality of milk is key. And the OK Bloomers that Haven is producing now with three to four weeks of age have a rich and buttery yellow paste thanks to the late summer grass that sprouted after their pastures recovered from early drought. So they’re at their peak now: “And I’m stacking them up for the holidays,” Dougherty says.
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