Tag: ZINGERMAN’S CREAMERY
Want to take your holiday party to the next level? Serve the perfect cheese pairings! Sounds simple enough, but we know that figuring out which cheeses go best with which wine or beer can be seriously overwhelming. There are just so many choices…
The Creamery has a plan to help you demystify the process: Pairing 101 Holiday Edition. This is a not-to-be-missed session of tasting and learning. We’ll pair three wines and three classic beers with a nice selection of cheese to get your hosting wheels turning. Imagine how impressed your guests will be when they realize what a cheese pairing aficionado you are!
Reserve your seat for Pairing 101 Holiday Edition, which takes place Thursday, November 17, 6pm-8pm at Zingerman’s Creamery, 3723 Plaza Drive, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108. Price is $35 per person and includes wine, beer, and cheese samples. Plus, you’ll leave confident in picking the pairings for your next shindig. Sign up here.
Construction Sale and a Big Update!
Dear Friends, Customers, and Vendors of Zingerman’s Creamery;
When we started our construction project at the beginning of the summer, we knew that, at some point, our Cheese Shop would need to temporarily close so crews could work on much needed updates to power, water, and the structure of our facility. While we had hoped to provide more notice, all of those projects are beginning next week, so for the safety of our staff and customers, the Cheese Shop will close next Monday, August 29th, and reopen later in the construction project after getting its own makeover.
We will be keeping our customers updated throughout our temporary closure with the status of construction. It is our hope that the Cheese Shop will reopen in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. Follow @ZingermansCreamery on Instagram, Zingerman’s Creamery on Facebook, and @zingermans on Twitter for our updates and pictures of the project in progress.
The good news? While our shop is closed, we will continue to offer our tastings and private events. Our upcoming schedule can be found at www.zingermanscreamery.com/events for details and to reserve your seats! Our Cheese Shop phone number will continue to be staffed M-F 9am-5pm if you have any questions or just want to say hi. We are also working with our Southside neighbor businesses to stock some of our cheeses and gelato. Zingerman’s Bakeshop will have an expanded selection of cheeses, including our pimento cheese & mozzarella! We are working on finding a place for our gelato, stay tuned for more details to come.
The even better news? We’re having a Construction Sale! To prepare for our downtime, we need to clear out the shop! Help us reduce stock levels and get some great cheese for a sweet deal at the same time. Friday, August 26th-Sunday, August 28th we’ll be marking down the products in our shop. Zingerman’s Creamery cheeses & gelato will be 10% off; all other cheese, meat, pantry, and houseware items will be 30% off; and we’ll have discounts on our beer & wine selections, as well – these items will be priced as marked. (The Fine Print: Construction Sale discounts can not be combined with any other coupon or discount for Zingerman’s Creamery, including staff discounts.)
Thank you all for your continued support of Zingerman’s Creamery, we hope to see all of you this weekend, and are so excited to share our beautiful new space with you when this project is finished. If you have any question, concerns or other feedback you can give us a call (734-929-0500) or use our contact form to send us an email!!
Zingerman’s Creamery has been making and selling cow’s milk and goat’s milk cheeses for nearly 15 years now. With a little money and a lot of great ideas about craft cheesemaking, John Loomis started the Creamery at an old dairy farm in Manchester on Sharon Hollow Road back in 2001. After just a few years there, the travel between Manchester and Ann Arbor (especially in the winter) was a bit too much 
to justify, and the Creamery joined Zingerman’s Bakehouse at what we now call “Zingerman’s Southside” in the early 2000s. John’s flagship cheese for the Creamery was Fresh Cream Cheese, which won an award from the American Cheese Society shortly after he started making it. Over the years John added more and more cheeses to the lineup, including more fresh and aged mold-ripened cow’s and goat’s milk cheeses. Back in 2007, when the Creamery was still relatively young, Aubrey Thomason left her position at Zingerman’s Deli and joined the team at the Creamery, diving headfirst into all of the hard work, challenges, and above all, joys of making cheese. In 2012 Aubrey officially became a Managing Partner in the Creamery.
Around here we talk a lot about the astounding power of positive futuring and creating a vision of greatness. Early on in Aubrey’s Partnership, she and John lead our team in writing a long term vision of the Creamery’s success. They wanted to do something great with this Creamery, and to improve all of our bottom lines; Great Food, Great Service and Great Finance. When we were going through that process one thing became abundantly clear: in order to take the Creamery into the future, we were going to have to make a big investment in our facility, getting better equipment that would allow us to truly shine.
With that vision firmly in mind, over the last several years we have come up with many iterations of a renovation project. What is the biggest and the most we can do? Can we have a Class C liquor license for alcohol service? Can we build a tunnel for aging, like our favorite French cheesemakers have? Can we have solar panels on the roof? For every possible dream, a project was designed, the sales and savings imagined, the finances projected, and the risks weighed.
The dairy industry is a notoriously difficult field in which to make a profit, and the Creamery has never been a terribly profitable business. What could we do to take the business forward? Everyone at the Creamery had a strong vision and desire to succeed, and we have finally set our sights on a plan that in which we can thrive—with $1 million dollars and a painstakingly crafted renovation plan, we’re going to improve our Creamery in ways we once only thought possible in our imaginations.
Upon completion of this massive project, the Production facility at Zingerman’s Creamery will have modern energy efficient equipment, air handling systems, and cheese aging environments. We will be able to take our already incredible cheeses and gelati and make them even greater by having the ability to tweak and control hundreds of small variables that go into making them. We will be able to meet the new pressures and challenges presented by increasingly comprehensive regulations and market demand. We will be able to meet the market place head on with the right products, in the right packaging, and at the right time. We have every belief that we can and will succeed and become one of the most widely recognized Creameries in the country.
Our intimate and humble Cheese and Gelato shop will also be receiving an expansion and face lift. In the future we hope to be able to offer our cheeses at more ages, as well as in simple prepared sandwiches and dishes. We have already expanded the gelato offerings and will continue to do so. We plan to continue to share our knowledge and passion for everything dairy-related through tastings, pairings, and events.
This renovation will take 4-5 months, and will require us to completely vacate the production area of the Creamery. We have forged an allegiance with the Dairy Plant at Michigan State University, and they have worked with us on a plan to manufacture cheese at MSU for the duration of the renovation. We are also very lucky to have all of our sister businesses here on the south side, and we will be able to use a kitchen here to continue making gelato. We will continue to operate shipping, deliveries and business as usual while we go through this transition.
Our retail shop will remain open for as long and as much as possible. Specific phases of this project will require us to close our retail shop, and we will be letting you all know how to find our products while we are down—we’re planning some pop-ups around town, and will be sharing that info on our facebook page and website when we have them nailed down. Please feel free visit our website for updates, as we’ll keep you all posted on our progress.
Thanks, from the team at Zingerman’s Creamery.
$5 off during November at Zingerman’s Deli and Zingerman’s Creamery
Throughout November, we’ll be featuring one of our all-time favorite soft-ripened goat cheeses. A recipient of American Cheese Society Awards in 2006, 2007, and 2012, the Detroit Street Brick is quickly becoming a fan favorite in restaurants and shops throughout the Midwest and along the West Coast.
This velvety bit of goaty goodness gets its start from some of the very best regional mixed-herd goat dairies we’ve had the pleasure of working with. After a very gentle low-temperature pasteurization, we allow the milk to set for hours and hours, so this subtle and complex goat’s milk imparts as much flavor as possible to the resulting curd.
Whereas the majority of cheesemakers still use comparatively less expensive calf rennet (from cows) to make their goat’s milk cheese, we opt for kid rennet (from goats) which remarkably alters and enhances
both the flavor and texture of the finished cheese.
While subtle, there is an immediately recognizable note of citrus in the paste of this cheese, and over time we’ve come to use whole and freshly cracked green tellicherry peppercorns to tease this citrusy essence out even further. The balance of this cheese is astounding, and it always brings a smile to our faces to pull one out of our aging room, cut through its fluffy rind, and taste the interplay of some very intriguing flavors.
Honored by Cooking Light as one of its favorite cheeses for the holiday season, we feel that the Brick really soars in the Fall, thanks mainly to the comparative richness of autumn goat’s milk. As the temps start to drop, we see a marked increase in both the butterfat and protein content of our goat’s milk, and richer milk translates directly into richer cheese. The Brick pairs wonderfully with all sorts of late season root vegetables and squashes, but our favorite way to enjoy this cheese is one of the simplest: get a baguette from Zingerman’s Bakehouse, put a thin slice of Detroit Street Brick on it, grab a bottle of your favorite olive oil, drizzle away, and enjoy!
A Super-Rich Jersey Cow’s Milk Cheese
The Manchester draws its origins from a soft-ripened double cream cheese along the Welsh-English border, but through process differences (both intentional and unintentional) no longer bears any resemblance to its very distant cousin. By way of gentle pasteurization and an extraordinarily slow culturing process, the Manchester fully embodies the intricate and sumptuous flavors of the extraordinarily rich Jersey cow’s milk we use to make it.
Featuring a thin, wrinkly geotrichum candidum rind and a luscious, tasty creamline just underneath that rind encompassing a dense, slightly earthy paste, the Manchester varies from a fudgelike delight when young, to an ooey-gooey decadent treat when aged past 2 months.
Like other cheeses, Manchester is best served at room temperature when its full flavor will come through. Because it’s so soft, it will ooze a bit when it’s warm. That’s normal. Try it dusted with light muscovado sugar then baked into puff pastry and served warm for an excellent hors d’oeuvre. Or offer it up in wedges, topped with toasted almonds, hazelnuts or walnuts. It’s excellent spread on ham sandwiches topped with caramelized onions (see recipe below).
Hamchester Sandwich Recipe
(Makes 2)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus a little bit more to grill the sandwiches
- 1/2 pound sweet Vidalia onion
- 4 ounces sliced good ham, like the Prosciutto Americano from La Quercia
- 4 ounces Zingerman’s Creamery Manchester round (sliced thin if it’s cold,
spread if it’s warm) - 4 slices of San Francisco Sourdough bread from Zingerman’s Bakehouse
- 2 tablespoons chutney (optional)
Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet over moderate heat.
Add the onions and sauté until golden (about 25 minutes). Remove from heat.
Place a large nonstick skillet on the stove over medium high heat.
Using a pastry brush, brush 1 side of 2 slices of bread with olive oil, and place oiled side down in skillet. Top each slice with 1 ounce of cheese, 1 ounce of ham, half of the onions, 1 more ounce ham, and topped with 1 more ounce of the cheese.
Top each sandwich with another slice of bread brushed with the oil, oiled side up.
Flip the sandwiches a few times until the cheese is melted and gooey and bread is toasty and golden.
Enjoy!
See you soon!
July Cheese of the Month
We make these soft, creamy, fresh goat cheese rounds with the best milk we can source from small Michigan goat farmers. Over the years we’ve been fortunate enough to build relationships with some pretty incredible goat dairies, people who are passionate about the health and long-term sustainability of their herds, and this kind of dedication to the animals really comes through in the quality of the milk we receive from them. In order to preserve as much of the depth of flavor in that awesome milk, we use low-temperature pasteurization, a method much gentler than the more prevalent short high-temp pasteurization that a lot of modern cheesemakers utilize.
After that gentle pasteurization is complete we allow the goat’s milk to “set” overnight, which draws out even deeper and more complex flavors, maximizing its intensity. Once the resulting curds have reached a perfect consistency we do something a little different here at the Creamery—hand ladling. Each City Goat is hand ladled into separate perforated forms, which allow whey to drain at a consistent rate, and this painstaking and time-consuming process gives this cheese an amazing, evolving texture, from light and airy when very fresh to firm and perfect for crumbling when more aged.
More recently, we found a great way to package these cheeses. Back in the day we’d wrap them in translucent deli paper and set them out to continue draining, since wrapping them in plastic would lead to a less desirable texture over time. In our quest to find the best way to present our cheeses, we started packaging these tasty goat rounds in a small plastic container with a sealed top, The cheese features a very bright, clean, and slightly citrusy taste that pops in a variety of presentations.
For an easy appetizer, roll in freshly chopped rosemary, tarragon, basil, or any fresh herb you fancy. The citrus notes of this cheese are a perfect accompaniment to a number of charcuterie or crudités. Slice a city goat in half lengthwise, then stuff with roasted red peppers and pesto. For a Mediterranean experience, try it with honey and toasted almonds. When the City Goat is a little older and firmer, it is wonderful crumbled over salads or in any rich, tomato-based sauce.
The City Goat is available at Zingerman’s Creamery and Zingerman’s Delicatessen.
See you soon!