Leaving Amsterdam midmorning by bus, we travelled north for a day to tour Zaanse Schans and Zaandijk before a short drive to South Holland and the city of Rotterdam. Among the waterlogged fields, colorful windmills, and period accurate houses we visited the local storefront for the cheesemaker Henri Willig for a brief overview and cheese tasting opportunity. With the afternoon coming to a close we reboarded our bus and completed our journey to our hostel in Rotterdam, marking an end for the day’s journey.
Sat just northwest of Amsterdam are the town of Zaandijk and neigborhood of Zaanse Schans, straddled upon their namesake: the Zaan river. In an order to preserve the image of the Dutch countryside’s past various houses, windmills, and other traditional structures were relocated to Zaanse Schans creating a time capsule of a withstanding 19th century village. The use of windmills has been historically essential for the survival of the Dutch people, considering the challenging geography of the country. The meaning of the Netherlands is quite literally the low lands, and aptly so as some 26% of the nation’s area lies below sea level; this number surges to 60% when facing storms or other excesses of water. The Netherlands is also very flat, and its adjacency to the North Sea brings in strong winds that sweep across the country. The Dutch ingeniously use the latter to counter the former, constructing windmills equipped with Archimedes’ screws to pull water up from the lowlands and dump it into rivers, canals, or other seabound channels and waterways. Today, while many traditional windmills remain, a majority of modern pumping is carried out by diesel and electric pumps throughout the Netherlands. With the prevalence of modern wind power and other sustainable energy technologies, the Dutch way of life has in an odd full circle returned to windmills to pump their water.
Tucked away in the antique village were various shops, museums, and other opportunities for cultural interaction. For our company tour of the day we stopped at the Henri Willig store for an introduction to their business and a sampling session of their products. Founded in the 1970s, Henri Willig was a simple cheesemaker who held a disdain for the traditional method of producing cheese. Many hard and semi-hard cheeses use rennet as coagulant to help process the lactose during fermentation. A collection of enzymes sourced from the gut cultures of ruminants, rennet is often harvested from cows, specifically calves, as it is responsible for breaking down lactose in the gastrointestinal system and thus only the young of the species produce it. This practice, however, eliminates vegetarians, vegans, and ethics-concerned individuals from your customer base. To subvert this, Willig synthesized an animal-free microbiome to remove the slaughter of cattle young from his conscious and production process.
Microbial rennet is produced from yeast, fungus, or bacteria to simulate the effect of traditionally harvested rennet. Since it is derived from non-animal sources, it is inherently more sustainable due to its timely production and thermodynamic efficiency. Henri Willig carries this sentiment further into the cheesemaking process, making sure to completely utilize every component produced throughout fermentation. To create cheese milk, rennet, salt, and a starter culture are dumped into a warm bowl to solidify into a gel. When deemed appropriate large blades are run through the mixture to break down the curd. At the end of the process you are left with curd, effectively pre-cheese, and whey, a milky liquid substance, the latter of which makes up 90% of your product. After cooking and pressing the curd, removing and final whey, the end result is cheese with a whey byproduct. Usually dumped, Henri Willig reuses their whey to create beer thereby reducing waste, even going so far as to utilize said beer in the production of beer cheese, opening up new product lines for sale. This not only brings in additional revenue and customers for the company but also helps them reduce losses and opportunity costs incurred by unused byproducts and run a much more efficient and sustainable cheesemaking practice.
Tomorrow we are slated to visit the Zuiderzeemuseum in Wierdijk and get the chance to encounter the wealth of maritime and cultural knowledge stored at the site, giving us a proper introduction to the history of our new abounds. Later in the week we’ll engage in more visits marine, including the Deltaworks storm surge and flood control barrier network and the crossroads between livestock and the life on the water at the Floating Farm in Rotterdam’s old port.
Tot ziens, Amsterdam; aangenaam Rotterdam!
– Duncan Dockstader