F&W Game Changers: Miyoko Schinner

Miyoko Schinner's eyes light up and her hands grasp her heart the moment she begins to speak about cheese. It has been decades since she has eaten the dairy version, but it's her deep obsession with all cheeses-stinky, creamy, pungent, salty, and ripe-that inspired her to launch her vegan dairy empire. These days, Schinner, the founder of Miyoko's Creamery, makes her cheese plates with stretchy mozzarella made from cashew milk, a soft sharp cheddar spread made from rice, and wheels of truffle cheese crafted from mushrooms and coconut oil. It's an impressive operation that involves two cheese caves for aging, a full lab for testing new recipes, and big ambitions for the future.

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th Schinner一直是一个革命性的力量e world of animal-free food. Over the past four decades, she has written vegan cookbooks, taught cooking classes, opened and shut a vegan restaurant in San Francisco by the name of Now and Zen, and launched a vegan natural foods company and vegan brands, including a competitor to Tofurky. In 2012, she published手工素食奶酪the seminal cookbook that put vegan cheesemaking on the map. "I've since visited several little mom-and-pop shops [around the world] based on my book," says Schinner. "I like to joke that it's the book that launched a thousand cheese companies." But none have managed to scale like her own.

Schinner founded Miyoko's Creamery, her "creamery of tomorrow," in 2014, at first focusing solely on high-end artisanal vegan cheeses-something that was next to impossible to find on the market at the time-before launching other popular products like a dairy-free cultured butter. Today, the line includes everything from an actually melty mozzarella to a cream cheese that's practically indistinguishable from the dairy version to cheese wheels that appear on the cheese boards at upscale restaurants.

Schinner first became a vegetarian around the age of 12, when she made the connection that the meat on her plate had in fact once been living animals. She didn't go vegan until her early 20s, by which point she had already fallen deeply in love with rich dairy products. Schinner taught herself to cook by working her way through Julia Child'sMastering the Art of French Cooking,用素食选择代替肉。她说：“然后，当我去素食主义者时，我就​​像，'哦，我的上帝'，因为对我来说，美好的生活正在将浓奶油或黄油倒入一切中。”“我当时想，'我要怎么吃？'”没有互联网搜索要做（那是1980年代），但是当时在东京当时在东京担任爵士歌手的辛纳（Schinner）从一个人那里找到了灵感。日本电视节目，在埋葬街区之前，修女将豆腐与灰烬涂上了几天。这种技术将豆腐变成了极其黄油的“奶酪”。对于Schinner来说，这是一个AHA的时刻，此后，她经常转向她的日本遗产，以烹饪和发酵技术不常用于西方厨房。Schinner和她的团队不断地尝试不同的基础，种子，豆类和其他豆类，以及更多的发酵剂，并转变为纯素食产品。

Schinner is now on a mission to build a vegan creamery that can compete with the big companies in the dairy aisle. She has plans to roll out several new products, including a vegan feta, vegan cheese sticks, and a first-of-its-kind vegan cottage cheese. For the dairy-free visionary, this is just the beginning. As she says, self-assuredly, "I don't want just a little cheese shop."