Salting methods

[Pete S]

  What is the differences in the final cheese using the different methods of salting?
  Dry salting the curds      putting in brine out of the mold    or dry salting out of the mold.
  some books do it one way, but some do it another. some even give you a choice of one or another
                                                                                                                                 Pete

[Spoons]

Hi Pete,

From what I've seen so far, when a cheese is milled, you salt it after milling (or is this only for cheddar?). Other types are mostly brined. I've seen the dry salt rub technique in the "Idiots guide to cheese making", but I haven't seen it anywhere else. Maybe the dry rub technique is used for basic home cheese makers only, but I think it's discouraged because there's no way of knowing how much salt went in the cheese. This may throw off the flavor. 

Anyways, I'd like to see some opinions on this too.

[Pete S]

  Mary Karlin ( in Artisan Cheese Making ) gives you both options for some of her recipes.   Pete

[Gürkan Yeniçeri]

I use a saturated brine through out the season and top it up with whey and salt and also boil it from time to time as required. I believe, it is much more economical for home cheese makers. There is no waste.

Whenever I use dry salting, the flavour is always off.

[UVM cheese chemist]

Dear Pete S,

Salting methods are indeed a very interesting and involved topic.  The various salting strategies likely emerged out of convenience rather than a particular desire to obtain certain characteristics.  To the best of our knowledge, the first type of salting, historically, was brine salting.  This was likely the first strategy used because those living near the ocean had an ample supply of sea water, which they somehow discovered would preserve their cheese.  In areas that are distant from the sea, but where salt deposits are bountiful, dry salting the exterior of a molded would have been developed as an easy alternative to brine salting, although salt mining would have had to be developed first.  Salting milled curds is another story altogether, and is likely a somewhat modern development.

That being said, we now understand quite a bit about the different effects that various salting methods have on cheese.

Brine salting results in a gradual migration of salt into the curd and a gradual outflow of whey from the curd into the brine.  In this system, the brine and the whey are essentially one solution in which diffusion occurs toward the center of the cheese.  Theoretically, if left long enough, the cheese will obtain the same salt in moisture concentration as the brine and be have a uniform salt concentration throughout.  As this process is fairly slow, cheeses that are brined for a brief amount of time (everything is relative as the diffusion of salt depends on characteristics of the curd) do not equilibriate with the brine, and salt gradients will exist in the cheese for some time; in any system where a molded cheese is salted a gradient exists with high salt in the exterior and low salt at the center.

Dry salting is a bit different in a few ways.  Firstly, dry salting is usually a much shorter process.  When salt is applied to a curd, whey leeches out and progressively dissolves the salt.  This results in a thin film of saturated brine around the cheese.  At this point, the system resembles a brine cheese; dissolved salt migrates into the cheese and whey leeches out.  The difference lies in the concentration of the thin salt solution film, which is much higher than a prepared brine; this solution will remain saturated as long as there is solid salt progressively dissolving into the extruding whey.  The rate of flow of whey out of the cheese is sufficient to cause appreciable dehydration of the outside of the cheese.  This can be desirable in some instances, as this promotes the formation of a rind early in the cheesemaking process.  Care must be taken that a dehydrated layer is not formed before sufficient salt has migrated into the cheese or enough whey has exited the cheese, as the dehydrated layer become progressively impervious as it forms.  This can be somewhat affected by manipulating the temperature of the environment and the pH of the curd at this step.  All in all, dry salting generally results in less salt uptake than brining, and greater dehydration of the exterior, although this last point deserves further discussion.

Salting milled curd is a interesting process in that it introduces salt to the curd more uniformly that dry salting a molded cheese.  This results in a higher salt content than normal dry salting, and impacts the bacteriology of the cheese more rapidly (see my previous post under the heading "1st ever cheese, and it's wet and sour. Help?" for further discussion on the impact of salting efficiency on cheddar.  Salting milled curd does not form a significantly impervious layer around the milled curd chips because the salting process is very brief (an hour or less, usually); this brief process is only possible because the milled curd provides more surface area for the salt to diffuse efficiently.  Milled curd may be salted several times with moderate amounts of salt during the brief salting procedure; this allows moisture to migrate from the interior of the curds tofurther prevent dehydration of the exterior and it allows the gradual dissolution and diffusion of salt into the curd.  This results in less salt being washed away in extruded whey and a generally more uniform salting. 

Proper salting is one of the most critical steps in cheesemaking.  Failure to salt properly will result in a different cheese than the one anticipated, and insufficient salting may result in off flavors, high acidity, bitterness, and other undesirable characteristics.

I cannot comment on the flexibility of recipes with regard to salting procedure.  It is unlikely that different salting methods in the same recipe would result in the same product, but it is possible that under different salting regiments resulting cheeses would still be appetizing.  This is the art of cheesemaking.

Hope this was helpful.

Happy cheesemaking,

UVM-cheese-LAB

[linuxboy]

To add to that briefly, dry salting has the potential to create more gradients or accentuate existing gradients in the cheese. Meaning, that thin film of saturated brine due to whey expulsion may not be uniformly saturated. If the curds have moisture gradients from being different sizes, or pH gradients from heat concentrations in the vat, the absorption/whey release rates will differ. And even with finer salt, it does not dissolve instantaneously. So the end result is that somewhat manageable gradients in the cheese mass become worse. In a brine situation, it wouldn't be as bad because the whey that the cheese released is diluted in a larger volume, and the relative gradients in concentration in the different parts of the surface area of a cheese would not be significant normally.

For these and other reasons, there are cheeses required to be dry salted that are actually brined first and then dry salted to comply with identity standards. Generally, you should brine. There are good applications for dry salting, though.... eg blue cheese to create salt gradient or manage surface flora growth.

[Pete S]

   Thank you very much for the great information .   this will help me a lot with the experiment that I am going to do
I will make a large batch of a cheese and divided it in too 3 cheeses and use the appropriate method of doing the different salting methods. then I can see how they make a differences in the final product .
                                                                                                 A big cheese to you.  Pete

[ferris]

This sound so tasteful, I have never heard about that before.