[Sca-cooks] Blue Cheese

[Rikke D. Giles]

On 09/04/2007 01:37:55 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
> Possibly neither learned it from the other.  Since cheese making 
> seems to  begin in the Late Neolithic, it is quite possible that the 
> practice of producing blue cheese was invented somewhere else and 
> introduced to France  and Spain by a third party.

<snip of really good info>

Actually as a cheesemaker, I can say that blue cheese happens.  
Naturally.  The hard part is keeping the cheese (especially that made 
from goats' milk, in my experience) from turning into a blue cheese.  
The blue mould will grow easily on the rind of any cheese but to get 
blue cheese as we know and love it, the mould must also grow throughout 
the cheese and for that it needs access to air.

Any cheese that is not pressed hard, but that has cavities and cracks 
running through it is a candidate to turn blue.  This includes aged 
curds which haven't been moulded at all.  Of course, the conditions at 
the surface do create a difference, as does the temperature.    So 
perhaps the question should be, who first tried that icky mouldy cheese 
that turned blue and decided it was good?  And then who decided to try 
and create conditions that favor that blue for thier cheesemaking?

I bet it happened in a lot of places as Bear suggested.

Aelianora de Wintringham

Barony of Dragon's Laire, An Tir
mka Rikke Giles, FoxDog Farm, Kingston WA