Bath Shop Team Visit to Bath Soft Cheesemakers

Recently our Cheesemongers from the Bath team went to spend the day with the Bath Soft producers at Park Farm, Kelston - the most local makers to our Green Street shop in the heart of historic Bath. We asked Louis to tell us all about the day! 

The day started out with an informational speech about the farm and its history, providing helpful insight into how Park Farm, owned by Hugh Padfield, has come to be the well-known brand we all know and love. In this talk they detailed what cows they have (a mix between Friesians, Shorthorns and a small bit of angus). This gives the milk a nice rich depth without leaning too heavily into the grassy flavour territory.

After the talk, we then started the process of making Bath Soft, which included heating the milk to the correct temperature, adding the starter culture and letting it sit in the milk to multiply for an hour, then eventually adding the rennet to separate the whey from the curds. Once this was done, we sliced the curd and began to scoop it into their unique cube shape moulds, carefully making sure we weren’t squashing them as we went. This completed, we let this sit to drain the remaining whey from the moulds. We returned to the Bath softs to turn them, not once or twice, but three times! This was done to ensure that had an even shape and were structurally sound.

While the Bath Softs were setting, we had a guided tour of the cheese rooms, admiring their lovely aging rooms for all their varieties of cheeses (their funkiest being the washed rind Merry Wyfe room). The rooms were spectacular and had their own individual scent depending on the room. In the Wyfe of Bath room, we got to see their brushing machine in action, which was doing the job of brushing the cheese mites off the wheels to keep their quality through the process aging.

We then moved onto the main room in which Wyfe of Bath was made, in a huge vat they heated their milk, added the culture and then the rennet, then these big mixers churned the curd into small rice grain sized chunks. Then the packing into the moulds began. Once completed, they were left to sit and retain their shape before being taken to the aging room.

After lunch, which we had at their lovely on site café, we had the opportunity to make mozzarella. This was a great exercise, and it included cutting curd into thin slices, adding plenty of salt (described as an uncomfortable amount of salt), pouring boiling hot water over them and letting them sit for a short time so they can reach their elasticity. We then stretched the curds and formed nice small balls of mozzarella, a simple but fun activity.

Overall, it was a very active but relaxing day full of useful information and a great insight into the cheese making process for not one but four different cheeses. Pad was a great instructor and spokesperson for the company, with a plethora of knowledge from the history of cheese itself to the most intricate scientific details of making their range of Bath cheeses.