Leipäjuusto is Finland's oven-browned squeaky cheese, eaten warm with cloudberry jam, in coffee or in salad. Three recipes, origins and why it squeaks.
Oven-browned fresh cheese that squeaks against your teeth: warm with cloudberry jam, in coffee or in a salad, and how to make it from milk.
Leipäjuusto, the cheese: A flat fresh cheese from the Finnish north, baked until it is spotted brown, eaten warm with cloudberry jam or softened in a cup of coffee. Here is how to serve it, how to make it from milk at home, and why it squeaks against your teeth.
Leipäjuusto is neither aged nor melted. It is milk set with rennet, pressed into a flat round and baked until the surface browns in spots, like a loaf of bread.
Baked, not aged: The curd is shaped into a disc 0.5 to 3 cm thick and baked on both sides, in an oven, on a grill or by an open fire. It is eaten within days, not months.
The squeak is real: Finnish acoustics researchers tested 100 samples in 2025: bread cheese squeaked in every trial, mozzarella in one trial in five. The sound is friction, like a bow on a string.
Cloudberry jam or coffee: The two traditional ways to eat it: warm with cloudberry jam as a dessert, or in cubes in a cup of hot coffee, eaten with a spoon.
Three ways to put it on the table. The warm dessert most Finns mean when they say leipäjuusto, a weekday salad, and the cheese itself, made from 4 litres of milk.
Warm leipäjuusto with cloudberry jam: The classic dessert: the cheese warmed in cream until it softens, with cloudberry jam spooned over. Ready in 20 minutes.
Heat the oven to 200 °C and butter a small ovenproof dish.
Cut the leipäjuusto into diamonds or cubes and lay them in the dish.
Bake for about 15 minutes, until the cream bubbles and the cheese has softened.
Spoon the cloudberry jam over the warm cheese and serve straight away.
In a hurry, 3 minutes in the microwave at 800 W does the same job. Lingonberry or bilberry jam works when cloudberries are out of reach.
Leipäjuusto salad: Pan-browned cubes of leipäjuusto on green leaves with berries and seeds. Warm cheese, cold salad.
Cut the leipäjuusto into cubes and brown them in a dry pan over medium heat, 2 to 3 minutes a side.
Toast the sunflower seeds in the same pan for a minute.
Slice the cucumber and the red onion thinly.
Whisk the oil, vinegar, honey, salt and pepper into a dressing.
Toss the leaves with the cucumber and onion, top with the warm cheese, the berries and the seeds, and pour over the dressing.
Leipäjuusto holds its shape in a hot pan, so it browns without any oil.
Homemade leipäjuusto: 4 litres of whole milk, rennet and a night in the fridge. The oven grill gives it the brown spots.
Warm the milk with the salt to about 36 °C, hand-warm, stirring so that the bottom does not catch.
Take the pan off the heat, stir in the rennet and leave it undisturbed for about 30 minutes, until it sets.
Cut the set curd into small cubes and let the whey separate.
Lift the curd into a sieve lined with cheesecloth and let it drain in the fridge overnight.
Press the curd into a flat round ovenproof dish, about 2 cm thick, and pour off any whey.
Brown it under the oven grill at 250 to 275 °C for 5 to 10 minutes, until dark spots appear.
The best leipäjuusto was traditionally made from colostrum, the first milk after calving, which is rich in casein. Ordinary whole milk works at home.
Fresh cheese, baked until spotted. Leipäjuusto is a fresh cheese made from cow's milk set with rennet. The curd is shaped into a flat disc and baked on both sides until the surface browns in dark spots, in an oven, on a grill or by an open fire. It is not aged, so it keeps for 10 to 14 days from the dairy.
It belongs to the north of Finland. Most dialect records of the word leipäjuusto come from Ostrobothnia and Peräpohjola in the north-west, while in Kainuu the same cheese is called juustoleipä. In the Tornio valley on the Swedish border it is kahvijuusto, coffee cheese, and across the river in Sweden kaffeost.