# Can you use the mold from a purchased cheese?



## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

I got some St. Albray cheese at a Memphis grocery store today, but I'm back in Missouri now. This cheese is fantastic. Is it possible to 'harvest' the mold and inoculate a goat cheese with it?


----------



## jerzeygurl (Jan 21, 2005)

now the frankhauser site says you can :shrug: 

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Blue_Cheese/Blue_Cheese.htm


but it does say uncontaminated, like unopened


----------



## Julia (Jan 29, 2003)

St. Albray appears to be a Camembert that's then been rind washed with Brevibacterium linens---a really rather complex cheese technically. You wouldn't be able to just rub the St. Albray on your goat cheese and make it happen, even if there were still the necessary amounts of white mold and red mold (and that's debatable). You'd have to provide the right conditions for the white mold to grow, and then, at some point that's not clear, switch gears to rind washing with a brine several times a day to get the conditions b. linens needs to grow. Both are complex cheeses.

I think to do St. Albray you'd need experience in making white mold cheese like Camembert, and also washed rind cheese like Limburger, and combine the two techniques (somehow) to get an St. Albrays. Kind of post graduate work, you know?

But dreaming is always good, and at the very least, you now have some appreciation of the incredible amount of work that cheesemakers put into their work. Most people never do.


----------



## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

Oh, gosh. I can't even dream of the time to do that many steps right now. I'm still driving back and forth to Memphis every week to visit my grandson.

If I just do the frankhauser thing, I wonder if it would taste good, even though it wouldn't duplicate the Camembert process?

There is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much to learn!


----------



## Julia (Jan 29, 2003)

Rose said:


> There is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much to learn!


Amen, sister! I've been doing the cheesemaking thing for years, and you could write a book about what I don't know yet.

The really interesting thing about molds and cheesemaking, is that if you give them the right conditions to grow, the molds will appear whether or not you've innoculated them into the cheese. And if you don't give them the correct conditions, you can put pounds of mold powder in the cheese and not get bupkus.

Blue mold is particularly easy to get growing on a cheese without adding it---it floats around in the atmosphere at all times waiting for an opportunity to grow---so David's article about getting it from a purchased cheese is rather disingenuous. How did he know it was the blue mold from the purchased cheese and not wild blue mold, which is so commonplace it causes problems in commercial cheesemaking facilities? 

And you need to remember that cheese is a living thing. The starters and molds that were introduced into the cheese at the beginning are alive and growing. As they grow, they change the environment they're in by consuming nutrients and producing waste products, and other new bacteria and molds that find these conditions attractive take over, so that it's perfectly possible to have a finished cheese that no longer has *any* of the original bacteria/molds alive in it.

Cheesemaking is a process, if you know what I mean.


----------



## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

You know how sometimes you wish you didn't know something!?!  

Please don't tell me about wild molds in my cheese! :help: 

I guess I'll get used to this, but with three immune suppressed people in my family at the moment, it's scary when I think about microscopic critters!

Hubby has my left kidney and is on immune suppressing drugs. My best friend has scleroderma and is on meds for that which make him susceptible to infection. My grandson's undergoing chemo, which just throws his immune system all to heck.

I think I'm germ phobic, and it's spreading to mold! :baby04:


----------



## Julia (Jan 29, 2003)

Rose said:


> I think I'm germ phobic, and it's spreading to mold! :baby04:


Oh, dear. Well, take a deep breath, 'coz mold and cheese go together like a horse and carriage, and always have done from the dawn of history. Mold is a miracle of flavor production for cheese, and is *not* pathogenic on properly made cheese. Look carefully to your acid development for safety, and enjoy, for molds add a dimension to cheese flavor that can't be overstated.


----------



## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

I saw the acid testing equipment in the catalog from cheesemaking.com.

I guess I need to order that, too.

Being a rookie is ....a process.


----------



## Julia (Jan 29, 2003)

Ah, yes. But the good thing about cheesemaking is you'll never get bored. There's always something else to learn.


----------

