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Opened my first cambozola tonight.  Disappointed that there was no visible blue growth inside. I'd sprinkled some dry PR onto the curds when I was filling the mould.  During ageing some blue had developed in a couple of places on the outside, but nothing inside.  PC development was inconsistent, I don't know if the GC dominated.  Still a nice cheese, but...

When I cut it open I could see where it had been pierced, but it looked like PC had developed in the holes.  Is that the usual behaviour?  How large a diameter hole should  be making?

Hey looks yummy. I am a novice, but I think blue mold likes more salt than candidum so maybe its a salt issue. Another idea I am coming up with on the spot here is you could put more PR and less PC. You could also put blue in with the curds, pierce the cheese and wait for the blue to start showing up. Then spray on PC. I think this would give PR more of a chance to get its foot in the ground (or their many feet I guess  )

If you are interested, I am currently aging a cheese that is turning in to a sort of cambazola... Experimental Cheese I attached my most recent photo of the big one.

Usually they are pierced top to bottom with a 1/8" diameter needle.  I use the temperature probe on my large thermometer.  You may however, find that the blue taste is still there despite the mold not developing.

actually I'm ageing two of these.  I had a question about rehydrating the blue mould (I noticed that you added it dry).  I let it sit with sterile water over night (instructions said up to 24 hours) but the mould simply dropped to the bottom and I suspect that if I centrifuged the suspension, the water would have been colourless.  I ended up spooning both the liquid and the blue spores (or whatever they are) onto my curd (I was hoping for a nice blue line in the middle of the cheese) but I'm not too hopeful.  Any ideas about this and whether hydration is necessary and how to do it properly?  Thanks!

I think that the problem was more that the holes did not stay open long enough , usually on a soft cheese you need to re-pierce  in the same holes agin after a few days .

And yes more salt will help , up to 3.5 percent if my memory is correct  , also I think blue tastes better with a little more salt than other cheeses .

And blue molds are so,agressive it does not really matter how you add them .

And a few people on this forum  through the years have had issues with Pc growing better than blue. And usually they had to  do what Doctorcheese  suggests and resort to spraying PC after blue started .

Thanks for the comments.   I pierced with 1/8" skewer, and re-pierced, so that was not the issue. Salt was around 2%, so maybe that didn't help.

Having said that, ate quite a lot of this one yesterday, and definitely has a strong blue taste, so maybe I was just expecting too much visually.  Going to do two more tomorrow, and perhaps try and cut down on the GC a little.