Brick cheese

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Brick cheese is a cheese from Wisconsin, USA made in brick-shaped form. The color ranges from pale yellow to white, and the cheese has a sweet and mild flavor when young, and improves to a strong ripe cheese with age. It is medium-soft, crumbles easily and is somewhat sticky to the knife. Brick cheese is well-suited to slicing for sandwiches or appetizers and also melts well. Served with corn polenta in the Midwest, where the brick cheese is thinly sliced and caused to melt underneath the polenta and tomato sauce topping.

Brick cheese is made in the form of a large rectangular or brick shape, but may also be named "brick" cheese because the cheese curds may have originally pressed with bricks. Widmer's Cheese cellars in Theresa, Wisconsin utilizes real bricks to press their cheese today.

Brevibacterium linens grows on the surface of brick cheese and is surface-ripened. Brevibacterium linens is also the bacteria responsible for the aging of Limburger cheese and many French cheese varieties. Cheesemakers often refer to the growth of the bacteria as a schmear. The cheese is placed on wooden shelves, then gets washed with a whey and water mixture and turned. After several days the cheese is then packaged.

The US Code of Food Regulations defines what the fat and moisture content of brick cheese must be. This Standard of Identity does not take into account that brick cheese should be surface ripened with B. linens. Brick is an American cheese, made in rectangular loaves, that was first produced in Wisconsin in 1877 by John Jossi, a cheese maker of Swiss descent. The loaf-shaped cheese displays numerous fine holes when it is sliced. When young, it is sweet and mild; after aging, it tastes somewhat like a mild Limburger or cheddar, and has been compared to a Danish Tilsit.

Corynebacterium and Arthrobacter are the necessary bacterial genera for smear cheese ripening. B. linens, while present in many smear cultures, is not typical.