Locally Sourced Cheeses from Fen Farm Bungay

BARON BIGOD
A creamy, white bloomy-rind cheese handmade on the farm by Jonny and the team, from our own raw Montbeliarde cows milk. It has a smooth silky texture and a golden curd, with long lasting warm earth, farmyard and mushroom flavours.
We’re rather excited about this cheese. It is the only traditional raw milk Brie-de-Meaux style cheese produced in the UK. In fact, even the French would be jealous, as our cheese is one of only a handful of its type in the world to be made by the farmer on the farm and can genuinely be called a true farmhouse Brie. Using a traditional recipe passed on to us by a French cheese maker, we have set about making what we believe to be something very special.
Our cheese is made by hand in small batches, very early in the morning so that we can use the raw milk still warm, straight from the cow at the perfect temperature for cheesemaking. The mould cultures are added to the warm morning’s milk and it is gently gravity fed into small vats just a few metres from the milking parlour, where the rennet is added. The curds are carefully hand-ladled into large moulds, using traditional pelle-a-brie ladles and the young cheeses are hand salted and then aged for up to 8 weeks in a cave-like environment.
Milk is a very fragile substance and can easily be damaged by splashing, pumping and haulage. Damaged milk makes poor quality cheese, which is why we treat our milk with the utmost care and respect, keeping its delicate cells and fat molecules intact. This is what gives our cheese its smooth, delicate and silky texture and complex, long lasting flavours that bounce around the mouth.
Baron Bigod is truly unique to our farm. Its flavours, aromas and characteristics are influenced by our own cows milk and the rich variety of grasses and herbs that grow on the grazing land of Stow Fen, an unusual wildlife-rich Basin marsh which is completely unique to the Waveney Valley