Symbol, it's as Sailor wrote. s salivarius is a special species of bacteria in the cheese world. Generally when considering cheese applications for lactose-consuming species, we look at it along the lines of the following continuum
- Moderate-temp (70-85) loving heterofermentive lactococci such as leuconostoc and some strains of l lactis
- Regular meso lactococci (80-~100F). predominantly l lactis powerhouse
- heterofermentive lactobacilli (90-110F), such as casei, rhamnosus, etc. these are your NSLAB
- Lactobacilli (95-125F), such as delbrueckii and helveticus.
That forms the core foundation of useful organisms that may be used as starters. If you examined them under a microscope, you'd see that the shapes and morphological attributes also change based on the expected temp ranges.
S salivarius thermophilus is special. For one, it spans this space in between normal lactococci and lactobacilli. Meaning it's both mesophilic and thermophilic, if we stick to that outdated naming convention. Two, it possesses texturizing properties. It, more than many other types and strains, tends to have "mucus" in the form of polysaccharide chains on the outer walls. Think of them like ropes that have small hooks in them. As those ropes tangle up, the bacteria form strands or chains, that are capable of trapping water and creating texture. In dairy science, we call these exo-polysaccharides. And three, as sailor helpfully noted, S salivarius tends to vary in how and what it eats. So some strains mellow out relatively early.
All of these and other interesting properties of S salivarius enable us cheesemakers to use them to create very novel cheese applications. Such as stabilized bloomy rinds. And more recently, such as the novel application I came up with in that extended shelf life fresh curd. It also enabled us to create custom culture blends.. such as picking a strain with specific texture and acid properties for yogurt, or for mozz. A stabilized cheese, BTW, is one that has longer shelf life or where the ripening or maturation processes stop quickly to enable the longer shelf life.
scasnerkay, we have a huge library here where you can read for free.
love to have a good reference that explains the various reactions and microbes.
My favorite is Pat Fox. We've had a few threads before discussing books.