Cheese is a prime example of food-related human ingenuity. It takes a highly perishable protein source (milk) and turns it into a longer-lasting, tastier, and more versatile product. That’s a neat trick, even before you consider the thousands of different cheeses developed throughout history.
One thing most cheeses have in common is that they need proper storage to stay at their best. Storing cheese is easy if you keep cheese bags or cheese paper on hand, but not everyone does. If you want to do it right, ordinary parchment paper, an everyday kitchen staple, works surprisingly well.
Why Keeping Cheese Can Be Difficult
It’s important to remember that cheese isn’t simply a product like potato chips. Think of it as a complete ecosystem in miniature — a complex alchemy of proteins, acidity, salt, and microbiology. Although cheese is commonly sold shrink-wrapped in plastic, it keeps best when there’s just a bit of air flow. Cheese “respires,” or sheds moisture, as it ages, and proper air circulation prevents it from becoming too moist and spoiling. To put it simply, cheese needs to breathe.
Using Parchment Paper as Cheese Paper
This explains why high-end cheese shops, or fromageries, wrap their products in paper. It’s a practice you should adopt as well, though pricey, specialized cheese paper isn’t necessary. The paper you choose needs to protect the cheese from both drying out and mold-promoting moisture buildup. Ordinary parchment paper does both of those jobs perfectly well.
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The kitchen staple works best with straight-edged cuts of cheese, whether blocks or wedges. Cut a piece of parchment that’s big enough to wrap around the cheese, and then place the cheese in the middle of it. Fold the parchment around it, sharply creasing the edges to form neat corners, ensuring the paper is pressed against the sides of the cheese. Then fold the edges over the wrapped cheese to make a neat bundle, and secure the end with a piece of tape.
After you take it out and cut off a slice or two, rewrap the cheese in the same piece of parchment, refolding it so it’s a snug fit for the now-smaller cheese. It’ll keep much better than it would in plastic.
