Sandwich Valençay
Valençay sandwich: a hand-ladled truncated-pyramid raw-goat cheese from the Berry, ash-coated and sliced down its flat faces, AOP since 1998.
Baguette Fromage
Sandwich Sancerre
Crottin de Chavignol coins on a buttered baguette, eaten with a glass of white Sancerre off the same flint hillside as the goat pasture.
Sandwich Salers
Salers sandwich: an Auvergne pressed raw-milk cheese made only on summer-pasture milk in a wooden gerle vat, grassier and more rustic than its Cantal cousin.
Sandwich Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine
Sandwich Sainte-Maure-de-Touraine: a baguette built around the Loire goat log, an ash-rolled cylinder with a rye straw at its centre, sliced into even discs with a thread of honey or a walnut.
Sandwich Saint-Marcellin
A ripe Saint-Marcellin pours rather than slices: an 80g Dauphiné cow's-milk disc spooned from its crock onto crusted bread, no butter needed, the cheese doing all the talking.
Sandwich Roquefort
The Sandwich Roquefort is built on the one major French blue made from sheep's milk, ripened inside a collapsed mountain: a richer, rounder cheese than any cow's-milk blue it gets shelved beside.
Sandwich Roquefort-Noix
Roquefort with walnut halves on a baguette: the classical French cheese-board duo built into a sandwich, the walnut doing as much structural work as the blue.
Sandwich Rocamadour-Miel
One thread of honey turns a plain goat round into its own sandwich. Run it light over a young Rocamadour, dark over a firmer one, and the sweet and the lactic tang hold each other up.
Sandwich Rigotte de Condrieu
The Sandwich Rigotte de Condrieu frames a tiny raw goat cheese from the Pilat slopes above Lyon, its rind freckling blue-grey as it dries, kept spare so the small round is not lost.
Sandwich Pont-l'Évêque
Pont-l'Évêque cut into honest slabs along a baguette, rind kept on, eaten with a glass of cidre brut from the Pays d'Auge orchards; the square moulding decides the cut.
Sandwich Picodon
The Sandwich Picodon turns on a dry goat cheese that crumbles rather than spreads: a sharp, peppery button from the Drôme and Ardèche, bridged by a thread of honey, on a tight-crumbed baguette.
Sandwich Pélardon
The Sandwich Pélardon is built on one small Cévennes goat round, caught young and creamy, its lactic tang framed by a thread of chestnut honey on an open-crumbed loaf. Hill cheese folded into bread.
Sandwich Ossau-Iraty
The Sandwich Ossau-Iraty closes a baguette over a thick slab of firm Pyrenean sheep cheese and a smear of Itxassou black cherry jam, the sweet-tart fruit doing the work a slice of ham does elsewhere.
Sandwich Neufchâtel
Heart-shaped Neufchâtel cheese sandwich.
Sandwich Munster-Cumin
Ripe Munster, the orange-rinded washed cheese of the Vosges, met by the warm anise of caraway the Alsatians call cumin. A pairing as old as the mountain pastures both come from.
Sandwich Gougères
Gougère (cheese puff) split and filled; Burgundian cheese pastry.
Sandwich Fromage Frais
Fresh cheese sandwich; mild, spreadable.
Sandwich Fromage-Beurre
Cheese and butter on baguette; simple classic.
Sandwich Fourme d'Ambert
Fourme d'Ambert blue cheese sandwich; milder blue.
Sandwich Époisses
Époisses arrives before it does, a pungency that fills a room and clears a train. So soft at its peak it slumps rather than slices, the loaf does the engineering and the cheese is the whole sandwich.
Sandwich Époisses
Époisses cheese on bread; very strong, washed rind.
Sandwich Curé Nantais
Curé Nantais cheese sandwich; washed-rind, strong.
Sandwich Crottin de Chavignol
Slice an aged Crottin de Chavignol into chalky rounds, pour the Sancerre grown on the same hill, and you have the wine country's own cheese sandwich: a 60g goat drum that lives two lives.
Sandwich Comté-Saucisse de Morteau
One Doubs farm sends milk to the village dairy and raises the pig: smoked Morteau sausage, cooked and cooled, against nutty aged Comté on a crusted baguette. Two protected names from one massif.