by David Flint
Four fat what? The typical lease contract or indenture for early settlers on land in Rensselaerwyck specified that the renter of about 100 acres, besides performing annually a day of service with carriage and horses, must also pay “yearly rent of twenty four Bushels of good merchantable winter wheat (and) four fat fowls…” to be delivered at the Mansion house of Stephen Van Rensselaer.
[private]So now an artisan cheese creamery recently established in Stephentown near the Route 22/43 intersection has, of course, been dubbed with the name “Four Fat Fowl.” The factory, which produced its first cheese last May, is the enterprise of Willy Bridgham, his wife Shaleena, his sister Josie Madison and his brother-in-law Seth Madison. The product is a hand made triple cream cheese that they are calling “St. Stephen.”
Bridgham is a former auto mechanic who specialized in Porsche sports cars. After taking an interest in and securing some education in the culinary arts, he responded to a call for help from his wife who was employed in sales at the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company. They needed someone to hawk the cheese and yogurt down in New York City. Bridgham obliged and eventually began selling and demonstrating the cheese not only in the City but all over the country. When the Chatham Sheepherding flock got sold he went to work for Coach Farm, maker of premium goat cheeses in Gallatinville, NY. He eventually became plant manager and supervisor of cheese making operations there.
Bridgham said that he and his wife, sister and brother-in-law a while ago looked around and asked, “Why don’t we have a cheese business of our own?” They wrote three business plans and found that, lo and behold, two of them might actually make money. With one of those plans they have actually done better than expected and are way ahead of schedule. Shaleena Bridgham has extensive experience in sales and distribution. Sales have been really good, Bridgham said. Much of the cheese is distributed to stores and restaurants in the Hudson Valley area. Some of those include Whole Foods, the Honest Weight Co-op and the Cheese Traveler in Albany, as well as the Blueberry Hill Market Café in New Lebanon, the Old Chatham Country Store and The Farmer’s Wife catering in Ancramdale. The rest of the cheese goes to a distributor in New Jersey and is shipped out to New York City and around the country.
The St. Stephen cheese Bridgham describes as a soft, cow’s milk triple cream cheese. It could be classified as a type of Brie. All of the milk comes from Jersey cows of Dutch Hollow Farm in Stuyvesant owned by the Chittenden family, formerly of New Lebanon. “The best milk I have ever worked with,” Bridgham said. He wants only the freshest milk for his cheese. He picks up the milk at the farm at about 7:30 am before it is even one hour out of the cows.
At 8:15 am the milk goes into the vat in Stephentown and is heated up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Cream is added and the temperature is raised again and kept at 150 degrees for a half hour to pasteurize it. Dropping back to 100 degrees, cultures are added and the mixture is held until the pH drops to the right level. It is then coagulated with rennet and placed into molds. The cheese sits over night at room temperature and then is dropped into a salt brine which gets rid of any stray, wild molds. Then it goes into the aging cooler. The cheese is flipped once a day. By day four, the characteristic rind of white mold has formed around the cheese, and after ten days it is done. It then has a shelf life of about four weeks. That’s the basics of production but surely doesn’t disclose the whole story of care and details that go into producing the cheese that, according to Matt Spiegler of the Cheese Notes blog, “has the color and texture of a freshly whipped buttercream frosting and a pillowy white rind wrapped around it. The flavor is intensely buttery, tangy, a little sour, with mushroom and grassy notes, the paste melting in the mouth.”
Bridgham said they are currently producing about 150 cases a week, each containing six cheese rounds. The intent was not to open a cheese store for local consumption, but there have been a lot of walk-ins, he said. Some of this traffic are people referred from the Beer Diviner next door. Word of mouth has produced others. A lady from the Heritage Spinners & Knitters group stopped in one day and within a week about 15 more Spinners & Knitters came in looking for cheese. Bridgham said the Creamery does not have any regular walk-in hours, but someone is usually there during the day from Tuesday to Sunday. The phone number is 733-5230. Check out the website at fourfatfowl.com.
St. Stephen triple cream right now is the sole product, but the group is considering producing a wash rind soft cheese sometime in the future. “It won’t be nearly as mean as Limburger,” Bridgham said. This cheese will require some new equipment including a separate aging cooler. “You don’t want these two cheeses in the same room,” he said. The name being considered for this new, heftier cheese, he said, is “Big Thunder” after Dr. Smith Boughton, the Anti-Rent War leader who was born in Stephentown.
Bridgham, who grew up in nearby Nassau, said he and his colleagues are quite happy with their location in Stephentown. “I’ve always loved this town,” he said.[/private]