Kitchen Creamery by Louella Hill

Author:Louella Hill [Louella Hill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2015-02-17T16:00:00+00:00

JUDGING RIPENESS

To tell if the cheese is ready, look for a change in shape or a “relaxing” of the edges. Sniff the cheese and see if you sense a light ammoniac odor. Finally, with your finger, press down on the center of the wheel and see if you sense a softening (check early on when the cheese is young so you have something to compare it to). The center should feel more like a soft peach than a firm eraser.

Bloomy-rinds are fun to make because they are ready to eat after a relatively short amount of time—perhaps as little as 3 weeks. But don’t jump the gun! If a cheese is eaten too soon, your microscopic friends won’t have had enough time to transform the curd. On the other hand, these cheeses can become overripe easily as well. Whereas you can stockpile wheels of Gouda or bricks of cheddar, you cannot stockpile bloomy-rinds. The whole fleet will ripen at once, like a box of avocados. Having friends in position, ready to eat as the ripening date nears is always a good idea.

An interesting side note: The rapid ripening of bloomy-rinds makes them a nearly impossible cheese to make commercially with raw milk. Because a traditional Camembert—a raw-milk bloomy-rind—ripens quickly, and because the USDA mandates a 60-day aging period for all raw-milk cheeses, Camembert and other raw-milk bloomy-rinds would ripen before the cheesemaker is allowed to sell them. This, to me, is one more reason to make your own cheese. You can make “illegal cheeses”—raw-milk cheeses aged for less than 60 days—to enjoy whenever you want.

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