Sandwich Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine

A length of rye straw runs end to end through every Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine, branded with the AOP number of the dairy that made the log, and the maker pulls the cheese out of the maturing rack by sliding a finger under that straw. The straw is the cheese's working scaffold. Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine is a Loire goat cheese from the Touraine plateau between the Cher and the Indre, a tapered cylinder around sixteen centimetres long, rolled in salted wood ash so the rind sets a soft grey, with a single rye straw threaded through the centre to brace the fresh paste through the weeks of cellar ageing. The sandwich is a length of baguette, a film of butter on the crumb, the log sliced into rounds across its width, rind on, paste at room temperature.

The cylinder format decides how the sandwich is cut. Because the cheese is a regular log it slices into even discs that lie flat down the bread and give the bite a continuous defined layer, not the smear a softer chevre would produce. The ash does more than colour the rind. Salt in the ash mix tempers the bright lactic acidity of the fresh paste; the rind reads earthier and rounder than the centre, and a round taken across both carries two registers at once, mineral edge then bright milk. The straw is purely structural for the maker, but its hole at the centre is what tells the eater the cheese is the real PDO and not a generic ash-log copy at the supermarket. The paste is mild in salt and short in fat, so the sandwich works on restraint, not on layering loud things alongside.

The cheese fails in directions a cow's-milk cheese does not. Slice a young Sainte-Maure cold from the fridge and the lactic edge clamps tight and the rounds tear at the rind line under the knife; warm it to room temperature first and the paste opens and the rounds cut cleanly. A log eaten too young reads as little more than seasoned fresh chevre, the ash flavour stronger than the cheese under it. One left to age past the four-week mark dries to a chalky centre that pulls the moisture out of the crumb. Too much butter coats the paste and the goat tang turns small under fat; none and the dry rounds drink the baguette and read flat. Honey laid on heavy turns the build into a cheese-course exercise rather than a sandwich; a thin thread is the right scale.

Unwrap one at a market stall and the smell is first the cool barnyard goat of the paste with the faint smoky note of the wood ash above it. The crust splits dry with a single crack. Inside the loaf the rounds give under the teeth without crumbling, the centre creamy and just below the temperature of the mouth, the rind a thin earthy band at the bite, lactic brightness arriving a beat after the salt. Honey, if there is some, pulses sweet across the tang and dries back. Walnut, if it is in the build, breaks dry against the soft paste and the fat in the kernel rounds the sharp edge of the cheese. The finish is the goat tang and the chalky note of the ash, lingering past the swallow.

This is country-market and Loire-cellar food, and the slate-board phrasing follows. At a stall at the Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine Foire aux Fromages, held in the town's main square the first weekend of June, the cheesemonger asks the customer whether they want the cheese jeune or affine before cutting; in a Tours boulangerie at the noon hour the slate writes sandwich chevre-miel rather than naming the AOP directly. A cook who specifies au Sainte-Maure, with the AOP name spelled out, is telling the eater the cheese is the PDO log with the straw rather than a generic chevre buche from the supermarket cold case.

Variations move along the age axis and the pairing axis. A young log, three weeks out of the cellar, gives a soft creamy round and takes a drizzle of acacia honey cleanly; a four-to-six week affine cuts into firm chalky discs with a sharp mineral finish and wants a single walnut half rather than the honey. Honey-and-walnut is the standard Touraine pairing on a cheeseboard and travels to the sandwich without much change. The Loire's small disc-shaped goat from Berry is the Sandwich Crottin de Chavignol, the same goat register met in a denser puck rather than a long log. The pyramid-shape ash-rolled goat from the same belt is Valencay; the rind-blue version is the Selles-sur-Cher. Each is the same regional cheese family in a different geometry.

A log, a straw, and the 1990 AOP

The cheese received its French Appellation d'Origine Controlee by decree of 29 June 1990 and its European Protected Designation of Origin in 1996, fixing the name to a defined production zone covering parts of four central French departments: Indre-et-Loire, Loir-et-Cher, Vienne and Indre. The AOP specification fixes the maximum diameter and length of the log, requires that the rye straw inserted through the centre be marked with the producer's identification number, and reserves the name for raw goat's milk cheeses made in the zone to the traditional method.

The straw is older than the AOP by centuries and is doing the same job it has done since farmhouse production began on the plateau. A fresh log of soft acid-set goat paste does not have the body to hold its shape during the weeks of cellar ageing; the rye straw, pushed through the length of the cylinder as the cheese is moulded, both reinforces the log against collapse and admits air to the centre during ageing so the paste matures evenly through to the core. Modern industrial chevre logs use a plastic or wooden core, then remove it; the AOP specification preserves the rye straw because the straw is part of the maturing process, not a finishing decoration.

The local origin attribution belongs to medieval Touraine and to legend rather than to a fixed date. The standard regional story names the town of Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine as the historic market town where the cheese was first sold by farmhouses across the Touraine plateau, and traces the cheesemaking tradition to the eighth century, sometimes linked in folklore to Moorish women left behind after the Battle of Poitiers in 732. Those origin stories are legend, not record. The first dated milestone the dish itself can claim is the AOC decree of 29 June 1990, the day the cheese became a legally defined product with the straw written into its specification.