Cheese Type & Number: Blue, #12

Description: This is a traditional blue cheese recipe

Source of Recipe: Home Cheese Making

Date: 2/21/04

Warming the Milk: Warm 2 gallons whole cow’s milk (Longmont Dairy) to 92

I saw the slightest hint of blue mold starting to form on this cheese this morning. So, that is 9 days to mold formation.

How is the blue progressing? Also - what is a ‘mold sandwich’?

This cheese is progressing very nicely. It is now covered with blue mold and I’ll need to scrape it soon. It is firmer than the Stilton was.

You form the cheese in a mold sandwich. This amounts to a cheese board (I use some poplar wood cut into 8” squares) with a cheese mat on it (I use the Japanese bamboo mats used in making sushi rolls). Then you put the actual round mold on that. Then, another mat, topped with a cheese board.

Don’t confuse the 2 uses of the word “mold” here. Sometimes I use it to describe the “blue mold” that grows on the cheese. Other times I use it to describe the apparatus used to “mold” the cheese into its round form.

Ricky Carrol describes a mold sandwich well in her book. There might even be some drawings. The idea is to have the cheese curds in a metal or plastic mold setting on a cheese mat that is setting on a board. On top, is another cheese mat and board. The mold holding the curds is “sandwiched” inbetween. This way, you can just turn the whole thing over easily.

On 29 March, I scraped the mold from the exterior of this cheese. I noticed that it was forming a hard rind on it, like a parmesan, for example. I don’t think this is intended, and I suspect it is happening because of low humidity. The humidity in the fridge is about 77% and I can’t seem to get it any higher. So, I placed the round of cheese in a plastic container and sealed it. In another couple of months, I’ll wrap it in foil and age it at a much cooler temperature.

Today, I removed this cheese from the fridge downstairs where I had kept it around 55 degrees, I scraped the outer surfaces removing the build-up of mold. Then, I tightly wrapped it in foil and put it in a fridge where the temperature is around 40 degrees. I plan to age it until late August.

I was going to age this for a full 6 months and cut into it on my birthday in late August. But, it was just sitting there in the fridge! My mother-in-law is visiting and she likes cheese, so we cut into the blue.

The consistency is firm and smooth. A little firmer than what I expected, not at all crumbly. Relatively moist without being soft.

Blue mold had formed nicely along each puncture length.

The flavor is mild, but definitely the flavor of “blue cheese” with a little bit of a bite to it.

A good cheese. I might wrap it back up and let it age another 2 months to see if it gets any stronger.

Definitely a keeper recipe.

This is now tempting us to break out of our “Cheddar” rut, and embark on something more exciting!

Have you ever made cheese with sheep’s milk? I don’t think that we have a source here in N.J., and I haven’t seen it in Pennsylvania, but Roquefort is one of our favorites, and we’d certainly like to try to make something as wonderful as that!
We visited the vilage of Roquefort a few years ago, and took a tour of the caves - what a wondeul experience - especially the tasting room at the end of the tour!!

No, I have never used sheep’s milk.

However, I have made some pretty good Spanish Manchego cheese, which is supposed to be made from sheep’s milk. I get the “tang” of sheep’s milk by using lipase powder. See the recipe elsewhere in this forum.

You’d be inventing something new, but sounds like fun!