Cheese Mold Growing Process
The Beginning
Blue, Stilton, Roquefort or Gorgonzola---mold-ripened cheese with blue to blue-green mottled veins and an earthy, piquant taste has livened up appetizers, salads and pasta for centuries. Sliced, crumbled or spread, each variety is an accidental masterpiece. All cheese starts with milk from cows, sheep or goats---different types make different cheese. The milk is curdled with an acid like vinegar or lemon juice and the leftover liquid, or whey, is drained from the solid curds. Yeast called rennet is added to the curds to produce enzymes that give each cheese its unique flavor. The cheese is then pressed and packaged for aging. The first blue cheese was supposedly descended from cheese and some wayward mold in a French cave--or, perhaps, migrating from bread left near the starter tank. Years ago, cheese makers near Roquefort, France and Stilton, England discovered that if they left their cheeses in local caves, a harmless blue-green mold gave them a musky taste and bite. The mold that lived in the soil contributed the spores that floated onto the cheese and grew there, just like the flowers that grew in their gardens.
The Process
All blue-veined cheeses depend on the addition of the mold Penicillium roqueforti or one of its cousins for their tastes and textures. Mold grows from spores; microscopic "children" of a parent fungus. Spores require food, moisture, oxygen and the proper temperature to grow and thrive; a well-ventilated, underground cheese shed is mold-spore heaven for P. roqueforti . Cheese molds are closely controlled to avoid contamination by potentially toxic varieties. Mold colonies increase in density and grow filament-like roots into the surface of the cheese as the cheese ages. Cheese makers learned to bring oxygen into the interior of the cheese by punching long, slender holes in the cheese, allowing more spores to find a place to latch on to grow deep into the cheese. Instead of spearing cheese to insert mold spores, some cheese makers add the spores during the curd stage of the cheese. As the mold reproduces and grows roots, it forms long veins and pockets of blue-green, crumbly cheese.
The Finish
At some point, the mold population on the cheese grows to a point where there is nowhere for new spores to latch on to both food and oxygen; the aging process slows to a stop. Most modern cheese makers save a bit of each "batch" of mold to start the next, much like a bread or wine maker saves a bit of bread or "must" to start fermentation of the next batch. Mold is scraped off of aged cheeses, dried and broken up and stored for succeeding generations of cheese to ensure uniform taste and quality---the filaments of the mold will die but the spores will stay viable for months or years if stored properly. Blue cheeses range from hard and crumbly to soft and runny, depending on how long their moldy guests are allowed tunnel into them to dine.
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