Blue Cheese - Using As Blue Mold Starter?

[JsTx]

Ive read several times that to make mold ripened cheeses you can blend in a piece of the rind with water and add it as you would a normal freeze dried culture. But can the same principle work with a piece of blue cheese?

[linuxboy]

Yes, that would work. Viability and dosage control will likely be an issue, but blue is a vigorous mold.

Another way to propogate blue penicillum mold is to do it the way they originally did in France Take a thin slice of bread and put it in the same bag as a slice of blue cheese, letting the cheese touch the bread. Soon, the bread will get moldy. Take the bread, dry it out, make it into crumbs, and sprinkle the crumbs as the middle layer or incorporate into the evening+morning curd (for roquefort), or just curd.

[Aris]

Yes, that would work. Viability and dosage control will likely be an issue, but blue is a vigorous mold.

Another way to propogate blue penicillum mold is to do it the way they originally did in France Take a thin slice of bread and put it in the same bag as a slice of blue cheese, letting the cheese touch the bread. Soon, the bread will get moldy. Take the bread, dry it out, make it into crumbs, and sprinkle the crumbs as the middle layer or incorporate into the evening+morning curd (for roquefort), or just curd.

Im tyring this now. Do i have to refrigerate the bread with blue cheese or just leave it outside on room temperature?

[Baby Chee]

Take a thin slice of bread and put it in the same bag as a slice of blue cheese, letting the cheese touch the bread. Soon, the bread will get moldy. Take the bread, dry it out, make it into crumbs, and sprinkle the crumbs as the middle layer or incorporate into the evening+morning curd (for roquefort), or just curd.

That's a great piece of information.

[linuxboy]

Room temp, and blue needs oxygen, so open the bag every few days to let some oxygen in. Please keep in mind this method is not aseptic, and there's a chance of contamination.

[Cheese Head]

linuxboy, good info/method.

JsTx & Aris, I've only made three blue cheeses todat but all using a sample of store bought blue cheese that I had frozen.

All 3 bloomed great, my records in this Board.

[linuxboy]

Here's a more scientific method: http://jds.fass.org/cgi/reprint/18/9/599.pdf.

[Annie C.]

I have a question about making Cambozola cheese - if I use raw milk with pasteurized cream, do I need to use calcium chloride? Thanks for the help!

[Tea]

I wouldn't think so.  I've done a similar combination, and the cheese set fine for me.  Although is the cream pure cream, or whipping cream.  I didn't have much success the one time I used whipping (thickened cream).

[Annie C.]

My cambozola looks good (I did take a little taste, too-the blue taste is really good!) w/o the calc.chl.  (It was heavy whipping cream I used). I used crottin molds, and the cheeses  were really tall, so I cut them in half. Now they're getting a nice white fuzz (day 7) but seem a little more dry than the coulommiers I make in the same molds.  It hasn't been as humid here (in the Pac NW) as normal, so I think that's effecting it.  I'm definitely going to try the bread/rocquefort inocculant - thanks for the info.