Author Topic: Making my own inoculate?  (Read 4355 times)

iamgouda

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Making my own inoculate?
« on: January 15, 2012, 12:06:16 AM »
I was just this evening inspired to make Gorgonzola by a cheese my dad brought home. 
Is there a way to inoculate a subsequent cheese using the mold from the commercial Gorgonzola instead of buying mold powder?
I remember reading somewhere of a way...but I have no idea where I read that, and I can't remember exactly the procedure.
I know there is a lot of room for error...but is it possible?   How would I do it?  Thanks!!

T-Bird

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #1 on: January 15, 2012, 05:38:03 PM »
YES! That is the way I make my Stilton copys now and it works better for me than the powder did. I was reading (and it makes sense) that there are different strains of P roqueforti that have different properties. These different properties are one of the factors that affect the final flavors of the cheese. So I decided to ues Stilton blue mold instead of generic powder blue and my chese is much better. I take about 1 tsp of the veining from the cheese, suspend it in 1/4 cup boiled cooled water and innoculate 2gal milk. If I could figure out how to post pics, (I think I made them too large) I'd show yall some really good looking "Stilton" I opened before Christmas, made this way. T-Bird

JeffHamm

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #2 on: January 15, 2012, 06:00:44 PM »
Hi goudacheese,

T-Bird's got it.  Basically, get the mould from your source cheese.  If you've got a section with outer rind on it, you can just scrap that into a cup of warm milk that you'll be using in your make, or scoop it out of the viens (as T-Bird describes).  I've only made one blue, and it was a semi-lactic make, but I did this and it worked beautifully.  Just make sure that you mix your cheese "blob" into the water/milk.  You don't want it to just sit like a big blob on the bottom, but distribute throughout your milk.  So mix it with a sterilised fork for a while, and stirr it just before adding to the milk.

Good luck, and don't forget to post the details of your make.

- Jeff

Tomer1

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #3 on: January 15, 2012, 07:39:07 PM »
It is more risky then inoculating with an isolated PR culture since you can pick up any other stuff which stuck to the cheese while it was "on presentation" but since PR is a fairly agressive mold it should take over and the cheese may come out fine.

T-Bird

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #4 on: January 16, 2012, 01:47:07 AM »
I have followed this procedure 3 times with the same excellent results  so far. In my hands, the mold powder seemed quicker to ammoniate. T-Bird

iamgouda

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #5 on: January 16, 2012, 01:50:54 PM »
Wow, thanks!
The recipe I was going to use says to mix the mold powder into the salt before mixing with the curd. 
Does inoculating the milk before making do the same thing?

JeffHamm

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #6 on: January 16, 2012, 03:14:26 PM »
Hi goudacheese,

Yes, mixing the mould into the milk does the same thing.  Basically, it gets the spores distributed throughout the milk so that they will grow later.  Blue requires oxygen to grow, which is why you want lots of openings throughout a blue cheese and why you pierce them. 

If you harvest the mould from a cheese you like, just be very sure that you've sterilised everything (like the spoon you use to remove the mould, the fork you use to mash it up, etc).  You can harvest white mould from camembert as well.

As pointed out,  you have less control over what you're adding and by doing it this way you do increase the risk of contamination.  However, if you keep things clean and are careful, it should go well.

- Jeff

iamgouda

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #7 on: January 16, 2012, 03:18:28 PM »
Thanks!!  =)

Offline fied

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #8 on: January 16, 2012, 04:21:03 PM »
I've found that adding inoculate to the milk often results with much of it being washed away in curd drainage. I've had better results sprinkling it into the curd after drainage, or, with soft cheese, sprinkling some of the inoculate slurry between layers as they're added to the mould.

Offline dukegus

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Re: Making my own inoculate?
« Reply #9 on: June 15, 2012, 08:00:35 PM »
I take about 1 tsp of the veining from the cheese, suspend it in 1/4 cup boiled cooled water and innoculate 2gal milk.

Sorry for digging this thread up but it was suggested by a regular member :)
Could you give a bit more detailed info about the suspension?
I mean how do you suspend the mold in water and generally is there a pattern
of how much mold needs that amount of milk at that temp or something?

If I ask stupid questions forgive me, I'm pretty new!