The Artisanal Premium Cheese E-Newsletter
-01/24/07-

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Weekly Trivia

Question: What makes american artisanal cheese so expensive? Find out in the next Artisanal e-newsletter!
- The Artisanal Staff

Last Time We Asked: What makes blue cheese blue? How does it get there?

Answer: The most romantic cheese legends are those explaining blue cheese. One of our favorites tells how blue cheese was ''invented'' when a young Romeo brought his lunch of bread into the cheese cave to take shelter from a storm. He sat to eat part of his bread with some cheese from the cave when he became drowsy and fell asleep, dreaming of his far away lover. When he awoke, the storm had subsided, and he left the cave in haste to meet the lucky young girl who held his heart. After a few days, the leftover bread, forgotten in the cave, became moldy; and eventually, the mold spread to the cheese. Thus, Gorgonzola was born! (And Roquefort, and any number of blue cheeses from Italy, Spain or France; they all participate more or less in the same improbable creation myth.)

In modern (and less romantic) times, the blue mold is usually an industrially cultured variety of Penicillium Roqueforti. Gorgonzola sports a different blue mold called P. Glaucum. These molds are available to cheesemakers in powder or liquid form. They are added to liquid milk at just the right moment, so as to inoculate the milk in the cheese vat with the mold. After a period of ripening, the cheeses are pierced with stainless steel needles to allow air to reach the inner paste of the cheese. Thriving on the newly introduced oxygen, the mold begins to develop on the interior of the cheese, and the paste turns blue-green.

Do you have a question for our trivia section, or some trivia of your own to share?
Send it to editor@artisanalcheese.com and we may use it in a future newsletter!

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