using iodised salt for rindless blues?

[tinysar]

I know that antibiotics are sometimes used to create rindless blues - can iodised salt be used for the same purpose?

Everyone avoids it in cheesemaking because the iodine is antifungal/antibacterial, but couldn't this property be exploited to make a nice gorgonzola, for instance? i.e. salt the curds with cheese salt, then use iodised salt for the surface salting. For that matter, couldn't it be employed usefully anywhere (eg. in brine baths/washes) where the point is to remove/inhibit surface mold?

Or is there not enough iodine in there to be an effective antifungal? The lowest concentration of iodine solution sold as an antiseptic seems to be a 1% w/v solution. By contrast, iodised salt contains about 0.00005% w/w.

[anarch]

I can see where that might work for that purpose.   

However, the one time I accidentally grabbed the iodized salt cellar and salted the rinds of some small molded cheeses, they ended up with, well, a distinctly iodized taste that wasn't really what I was aiming for, so you would need to take that into account.

[tinysar]

Yeah, I'm starting to wonder if iodised salt is avoided more for aesthetic reasons than any other.

[iratherfly]

Antibiotics??? Never.  Anti-mucor or competing pro-biotics yes. Iodine is another one of those things that affect the natural balance of cheese. It is unpredictable in how it kills various lactic bacterium, rind fungi and beneficial yeasts. I would avoid it. The technology for rindless blues is quite simple. Use foil!

[tinysar]

Ah, I had just assumed that natamycin was an antibiotic because of the name (the "-mycin" suffix), but investigating further I find out that it's only antifungal, which makes sense.

[iratherfly]

It is used in cheese as a preservative.