27 July 2011

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free

Awaiting my first class at the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese at the University of Vermont, I solemnly, silently swore to my late sister Sharon, whose bequest on that August 2009 day began funding an intense and still active foray into fromage, that a new career path would certainly intersect at some point – even if my eventual occupation omitted immersing my hands in milk. Still, my declaration of independence on 4 July 2010, establishing Cheese Happens LLC, was made minus any notion of flip-flopping the cheese/bread equation. But in soothing the disappointment bred by losing the locus of my dream downtown creamery/bakery with a surge in sourdough breadbaking and a torrent of tweaks to my Old Waverly scone/muffin/tea bread/cookie formulas, I freed myself to acknowledge 40 years of baking will forever trump all amassed and eventual cheesemaking. Cheese will still happen, but baking is the bomb.

How hilarious that a year after writing about forming Cheese Happens LLC in Let Freedom Ring, the new proposed location's roof hosts a replica Liberty Bell and Statue of Liberty (a gift to the United States from France). Just back from French bread camp in Vermont, where we baked in the glory of a monumental French oven, I sat in my truck (Maryland-tagged CHEVRE) and stared at this familiar-as-home, forlorn warehouse, perfectly set up and sized for both bread and cheese, with love bubbles in my eyes, morphing Emma Lazarus' words to reflect, rather, a future vision of me, over-tired and under-capitalized, boiling before a steamy, (hopefully) French oven, shepherding my dough from gassy little balls into magnificent miche, batards, and baguettes - with my chevre logs aging gracefully down the hall. On the .65 mile ride home (close enough to what I wished for), Lady Liberty beamed at me from a Remax billboard.

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