Blue Cheeses

Blue cheese is commonly thought to have been invented by accident. The story goes that a hapless cheesemaker abandoned a half-eaten hunk of rye in the cheese caves. He returned several weeks later to find that the mold covering the bread had transplanted itself onto the cheese. The daring pioneer tasted the cheese instead of tossing it, and blue cheese was born. Today, Roquefort blue from Aveyron is still inoculated with the spores of moldy rye bread.

The distinctive "vein" pattern of blue cheese is a byproduct of the production method. Since the blue mold - a type of fungus - requires oxygen to flourish, whole cheeses are pierced with needles to allow air to penetrate deeply into the cheese to allow for internal as well as external "blue-ing."

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