bake - September 2013 - 50

Fervere uses some American and some European

Bring that cheese

cheeses, but tries to keep all its produce as local and
fresh as possible.

“Is there such thing as a bad cheese loaf?” This is a rhetorical

The recipe

question that Fred Spompinato, owner of Fervere Hand Crafted

All cheeses have different characteristics and melt at different

Bread in Kansas City. MO, asks. The correct answer is no. “It’s an

temperatures. Bakers must play with things a little to get the

easy one to win the hearts of people with.”

process customized for the cheese they use and the bread
that they bake. And as mentioned before, it’s always about

Many bread bakers consider it a science, and it is. But maybe

ﬂavor. Spompinato loved the idea of having a smoked cheese in

really good cheesy bread transcends the science of baking. “I

Fervere’s regular cheese slipper and found a smoked cheddar

think you need to keep the science out of it,” Spompinato says.

that he liked, but that was not the end of it.

“I don’t think there’s any science about it. I think it’s all ﬂavor,
ﬂavor, ﬂavor.” While there are technical aspects that a baker

“The problem was that the ﬂavor was too smoky if we put

needs to be aware of, getting the ﬂavor to work remains the

the amount of cheese we wanted in,” he says. “So we found

most important.

another cheddar that was pretty neutral and cut that cheddar
in with equal parts. Inside the dough there are two kinds of

Considerations

cheddar.”

One thing that that bakers need to remember when baking
bread with cheese is to use parchment paper. Otherwise, it

Once divided and sitting on the parchment, the dough receives

will cause a mess. “No matter what kind of cheese bread, the

shredded cheddar and garlic curds to top it off. Half of the

cheese starts seeping and leaking and it will stick to your

cheese slippers then get topped with gorgonzola.

baking surface,” Spompinato says. “We bake on the hearth, so
we can’t have a sticky, gooey hearth, so anything with cheese

The Saturday Night Cheese Slipper

gets baked on parchment paper.”

Fervere’s cheese slipper did well and the bakery had plenty
of regular orders for the loaf. In fact, the cheese slipper did so

Pricing presents another consideration. Quality artisan bread

well that people began to come in to get them on bake night.

deserves quality artisan cheese, but a bakery could easily

“There were a few people that the bakers knew personally, that

eliminate its proﬁt margin by using cheese that’s too expen-

knew when our regular cheese slippers were coming out of the

sive. A $20 a lb cheese would probably price itself too high to

oven,” Spompinato says. “And that’s a whole different experi-

sell. “To be honest at $20 a lb, you probably just want to eat

ence, having one fresh out of the oven.”

the cheese,” Spompinato says. “There are just so many good
cheeses and it’s not hard to come in at $4 a lb. We run the

With folks coming in on bake night to get fresh cheese slip-

gamut now around $5 to $8 a lb.”

pers, it became an issue for the customer orders being baked

50 < AUG 2013 | bakemag.com
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