Blue Molds Penicillium roqueforti, as its name suggests, is what gives sheep’s milk Roquefort cheese its veins of blue It and its cousin P glaucum also color the interior of Stilton and Gorgonzola and the surface of many aged goat cheeses with the complex pigment produced in their fruiting structures The blue penicillia are apparently unique in their ability to grow in the low-oxygen (5%, compared to 21% in the air) conditions in small fissures and cavities within cheese, a habitat that echoes the place that gave Roquefort its mold in the first place: the fissured limestone caves of the Larzac The typical flavor of blue cheese comes from the mold’s metabolism of milk fat, of which P roqueforti breaks up 10 to 25%, liberating short-chain fatty acids that give the peppery feel to sheep’s milk and goat milk blues, and breaking the longer chains and converting them into substances (methyl ketones and alcohols) that give the characteristic blue aroma White Molds In addition to the blue penicillia, there are the white ones, all strains of P camemberti, which make the small, milder surface-ripened soft cow’s milk cheeses of northern France, Camembert and Brie and Neufchâtel The white penicillia create their effects mainly by protein breakdown, which contributes to the creamy texture and provides flavor notes of mushrooms, garlic, and ammonia Making Cheese There are three stages in the transformation of milk into cheese In the first stage, lactic acid bacteria convert milk sugar into lactic acid In the second stage, while the acidifying bacteria are still at work, the cheesemaker adds the rennet, curdles the casein proteins, and drains the watery whey from the concentrated curds ... White Molds In addition to the blue penicillia, there are the white ones, all strains of P camemberti, which make the small, milder surface-ripened soft cow’s milk cheeses of northern France, Camembert and Brie and. .. Neufchâtel The white penicillia create their effects mainly by protein breakdown, which contributes to the creamy texture and provides flavor notes of mushrooms, garlic, and ammonia Making Cheese There are three stages in the transformation of. .. There are three stages in the transformation of milk into cheese In the first stage, lactic acid bacteria convert milk sugar into lactic acid In the second stage, while the acidifying bacteria are still at work, the cheesemaker adds the