Wisconsin Cheese Cookbook by Kristine Hansen

Author:Kristine Hansen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493037926
Publisher: Globe Pequot Press

BelGioioso

MOVING TO GREEN BAY FROM ITALY in 1979 gave Errico Auricchio culture shock. An Italian community didn’t exist there. Nor did Gorgonzola.

But this fourth-generation cheesemaker and BelGioioso founder—along with his wife and three small children (then, later, cheesemaker friend Gianni Toffolon)—persisted. Tasked with starting up a US branch of the cheese company he worked for in Italy, “he thought this location was the best because of the vicinity of the milk producers and the farms that produce it,” says his daughter, Sofia Auricchio Krans, age forty-one. The idea was to get the company started and return to Italy. But it took three years—and by that time everyone had fallen in love with Wisconsin.

Toffolon is one of the company’s eight Master Cheesemakers—the highest number at any creamery—and has been making cheese at BelGioioso (which means “beautiful and joyous” in Italian) for thirty-nine years, since the beginning. He arrived at the age of twenty-three and knew very little English. Provolone was the first cheese he made in Wisconsin.

“I tend to like cheeses that are the most challenging to make,” he says, like American Grana and creamy Gorgonzola. Many BelGioioso cheeses have won awards, including eight awards at the 2018 World Championship Cheese Contest, including four gold medals (Parmesan, La Bottega di BelGioioso CreamyGorg, Mascarpone, and Fresh Mozzarella). Another award-winner, Crescenza-Stracchino, placed third in its category in the 2017 American Cheese Society’s contest. “It’s a cheese that melts beautifully,” says Krans. “It’s really milky and tangy.”

“I don’t think cheesemaking is about making cheese,” says Toffolon. “I want to make art. I want to be an artist. It’s like a sculpture in my mind.”

After working at a Green Bay architecture firm, Krans—who attended college in Miami—joined BelGioioso. That was about fifteen years ago. “I actually never realized I’d be in the family business,” she says, but the industry’s collapse after 9/11 and realizing consulting didn’t mesh with her extroverted personality resulted in this happy accident. She and her husband have two daughters (eleven and thirteen). Her brother, Gaetano, serves as executive vice president, and her sister, Francesca, heads up operations.

Sales calls are often hosted at the family’s dining-room table—paired with cheese, of course. “My mom is an incredible cook,” says Krans. “Our brokers become almost like family.” Krans’s mother—who grew up in Cremona—always made rigatoni on the weekends with the kids when they were little. “That was just normal to us,” she says. “There’s just lots of memories of cooking and being together. As kids, she would pick us up from school and bring us home for lunch.” It was a traditional Italian feast that the entire family would enjoy together.

“Food is memories in my mind,” says Krans.

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