Press it and the paste smears before the first bite, so this is a sandwich assembled around fragility rather than against it. Chaource from the Champagne region is a high-fat cow's-milk cheese with a thin white bloomy rind and a paste that is dense and crumbly at the center when young, turning unctuous and almost flowing near the rind as it ripens. Its flavor is lactic and creamy first, with a light mushroom note from the rind and a fresh sour tang underneath rather than the barnyard heft of a riper bloomy cheese. The build is a length of baguette or a piece of country bread, little or no butter, and thick wedges of Chaource laid along the bread.
The logic follows from the double cream. Because the paste is so rich and so soft, it reads almost like a fresh cheese spread once it warms, and it does not need butter or a sauce to carry weight: the fat is already there. The discipline is to keep the additions light enough that the cheese's clean tang stays in front. A young Chaource gives a denser, more crumbly sandwich with a fresher acidity; a riper one gives a soft, spreading one that has to be eaten over a plate. The cheese is delicate, so it is cut in wedges rather than thin slices, and it is laid rather than pressed, since pressure turns the soft paste into a smear before the first bite.
The bread needs a firm crust to hold a cheese that wants to slump, and the Chaource is best near room temperature, where the lactic richness comes forward and the cold chalkiness recedes. A few slices of grape or a thin film of fruit on the bread sharpens the tang without crowding it; past that, the cheese prefers to be left alone.
Variations stay on the soft high-fat rack: a Brillat-Savarin for an even richer triple-cream reading, a young Coulommiers for a flatter and milder paste, a fresh fromage blanc on toasted bread for the tang without the rind. Each is a swap of one soft cream cheese for another, the bread and the restraint held constant. It belongs with the cheese sandwiches the catalog groups under Baguette Fromage, and its specific contribution is a double-cream paste rich enough to act as its own spread while keeping a fresh sour edge.