The Book of Cheese Part 10

After molding is completed, the cheeses are salted by sprinkling the entire surface with fine dry salt as the cheese is held in the hand. In this way each cheese receives and absorbs 3 to 4 per cent salt. After salting, the cheeses are arranged upon boards and allowed to drain twenty-four hours. They are then removed to the first or drying room.

The frames of the drying room (secherie) are covered with straw and the cheeses are placed carefully upon the straw to avoid contact with each other. They are turned each day to present a fresh surface to the straw during a period of two to three weeks in the drying room (secherie).

Mold begins to show as white cottony mycelium after five to six days, and slowly turns to "blue" (bluish green). When the cheeses are well covered with this moldy rind, they are removed to the ripening cellar.

In the ripening cellar also the cheeses stand upon straw. They are turned over every three or four days at first, then allowed to stand for a longer period.

When ripe, a Neufchatel cheese so made weighs about 125 grams. One liter of milk makes 225 grams of such cheese. The ripening of Neufchatel has never been fully studied, but a series of these cheeses were obtained by one of the authors; cultures were made and examined.[48] The salt-content in the first place was found to be so high that _Oidium lactis_ was eliminated as an active factor in the ripening. The mold proved to be on some cheeses _Penicillium Camemberti_, the typical mold of Camembert as it is made in Normandy, on others _P. Camemberti_ var.

_Rogeri_, the pure white form as used under the patents of M. Georges Roger in the region of Seine-et-Marne to the eastward of Paris and called by him and by Maze _P. candidum_. The physical condition of the ripened curd and the flavors encountered were those a.s.sociated with these two species by many hundreds of experiments during the Camembert investigation in Connecticut.[49] These facts justify the conclusion that ripened Neufchatel is first soured by lactic organisms, then so salted as to eliminate or reduce to a minimum the characteristic activities of _Oidium lactis_, while the proteolytic action and the physical changes are closely similar to those of Camembert which is ripened primarily by the same molds.

+143. The Camembert group.+--The soft cheeses ripened by molds are French in origin. Their manufacture has spread into Germany, Italy and America. Of the series, the most widely known is Camembert, which will be described as typical for the group. Brie, Coulommiers, Robbiola and Ripened Neufchatel belong to this series.

+144. Camembert cheese.+--The origin of Camembert is given by French authorities as 1791 in the Commune of Camembert near Vimoutiers in Orne, France. From a very restricted production at first, Camembert-making has spread through the region from Caen in the west to Havre, Rouen and a considerable area east of Paris. In America Camembert began to be made in one factory about 1900. Several other factories followed by 1906. The difficulties and losses encountered led to the abandonment of these undertakings, until at the outbreak of the European war in 1914 but one factory was making Camembert and that only on an experimental scale.

Meanwhile the United States Department of Agriculture and the Storrs Experiment Station had taken up and solved, on an experimental basis, most of the problems arising in these commercial failures. A shortage of product at the outbreak of the war brought about the re-establishment of a series of factories. The product as put on the market indicates that a permanent establishment of Camembert-making is entirely practicable.

Camembert cheese is made from cow's milk either whole or very slightly skimmed; the removal of about 0.5 per cent of fat has been found to be desirable if not actually necessary.

+145. Description of Camembert.+[50]--These cheeses are made in sizes 2 to 4 inches in diameter and 1 to 1 inches in thickness. They are ripened by the agency of molds and bacteria which form a felt-like rind over their whole surface, 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch in thickness. This rind may be dry and gray or grayish-green, consisting of a felt-like surface of mold on the outside, below which a harder portion consists of mold embedded in partially dried cheese, or the moldy part may be more or less completely overgrown or displaced by yellowish or reddish slime composed mainly of bacteria. Good cheeses may have either appearance.

Inside the rind, the cheese is softened progressively from the rind toward the center from all sides, so that a fully ripe cheese has no hard sour curd in the center, but is completely softened. No mold should be visible inside the rind, but the moldy rind itself is necessary because the ripening is caused by the enzymes secreted by the organisms of the rind into the cheese. As the curd ripens, the changed portion a.s.sumes a slightly deeper color than the unripe curd as a result of chemical changes. Well-ripened cheeses vary from nearly a fluid texture to the consistency of moderately soft b.u.t.ter. The ripening of Camembert is finished in wooden boxes which protect the cheeses from breaking after they become soft and during the market period.

+146. Conditions of making and ripening.+--These processes depend on a very close adjustment between the composition of the freshly made cheese and the temperature and humidity of the rooms in which the cheeses are made and ripened. Very slight failures in control bring loss in ultimate results. The room for making Camembert should be maintained between 60 and 70 F. and should be wet enough to reduce drying to a minimum. The essentials of apparatus are comparatively inexpensive. Work on a factory basis calls, however, for the installation of special tables and other apparatus to utilize s.p.a.ce and labor to advantage. Rooms are protected from change of weather by double sash in the windows. Flies must be excluded by close-meshed screens for all doors and windows with movable sash. The equipment installed in such a room is shown in Fig. 18.

Curdling cans are ranged on a shelf a few inches above the floor along one side of the room below an open tin trough with side branches. This open trough brings the milk from the mixing vat to the curdling cans.

(The open tin trough offers no lodgment for dirt.) The cans hold about 200 pounds of milk, are about 12 inches in diameter at bottom, and 20 to 24 inches at top. They are heavily tinned. Iron trucks as high as the shelf and with tops the same diameter as the bottoms of the cans form a convenient method of bringing cans of curd to the very edge of the draining tables.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.--Camembert cheese-making room in an American factory.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.--Draining mat for Camembert cheese.]

The wooden draining tables are placed about 32 inches above the floor; they are usually made of 2-inch lumber, have raised edges and slope slightly toward the wall. Whey and wash water are thus carried to a draining trough along the wall. For cheese-making, each is covered with a strip of matting consisting of wooden strips held together by thread (Fig. 19). The strip of matting should be exactly the width and length of the table. The hoops used are heavy tin, with edges turned and soldered, about 5 inches high, 4-5/8 inches in diameter with three rows of holes about 1/12 inch in diameter and 2 inches apart in the row.

These hoops are placed as thickly as possible upon the mats.

+147. Outline of making process.+--The making process[51] is summarized as follows (Thom, 1909):

_Starter._--From 0.5 to 1.0 per cent of active starter is added to milk kept overnight below 60F.

_Acidity at renneting._--Milk t.i.trated to phenolphthalein should test 0.20 to 0.23 per cent calculated as lactic acid.

_Temperance of renneting._--84-86 F. is used for Camembert.

_Rennet._--From 3 to 5 oz. of standard rennet extract to 1000 lb. milk (10-15 c.c. per 100 lb. milk) produces a curd of proper texture.

_Curdling time._--To reach the proper condition for handling, 1 to 1 hours or longer is required. This is indicated by the onset of "sweating" or the separation of large drops of whey on the surface of the solid curd.

_Dipping._--A long-handled dipper is used to transfer curd from cans to hoops. This can be lowered into the hoop. This transfer is to be done with the least possible breaking. One dipperful is transferred at a time to each of a series of hoops. By the time the series is covered, some drainage has occurred and a second dipperful is added to the contents of the hoop. In this way the hoop is filled within a period of two to four hours.

_Draining._--Hoops when properly filled have taken in approximately 2 quarts of milk each. No pressure is used. Cheeses drain by gravity. They stand unturned until the following morning when they should be firm enough to permit turning without removing the hoops. The cheeses when firm enough to handle (usually on the third morning) are salted by dusting the entire surface with coa.r.s.e salt and permitting all that adheres to remain. The cheeses should then be removed to a room at about 58F. to prevent too rapid leakage of water and salt from their surfaces. Ripe cheeses of good quality show a total salt-content varying from 2.25 to 3 per cent with an average of about 2.5 per cent. When so handled there is slight, if any, loss of water and salt in the salting period of twenty-four to forty-eight hours. At the end of the salting period such cheeses should carry 55 to 57 per cent water or slightly more.

+148. Acidity.+--The essential biological factor in the making period of Camembert is proper souring. The milk should be free from ga.s.sy organisms. The lactic starter required should introduce the typical lactic organism (_Streptococcus lacticus_) in numbers sufficient to suppress all other forms during the next twenty-four hours. The amount of acid starter introduced, however, plus the acid resulting from growth during the curdling period, should not produce a grainy acid curd. The temperatures of handling are such as to favor this group of organisms if properly introduced and permit the development of nearly 1 per cent of acid (estimated as lactic) by the second morning. Cheeses with such acid are fairly free from further danger from bacterial activity. Members of the high-acid group (_B. Bulgaricus_ and allies) may be found in these cheeses but do not appear to develop in numbers sufficient to affect the cheese to any marked degree.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.--Halloir, the first ripening room for Camembert in an American factory.]

CAMEMBERT CHEESE RECORD

Date_______________ Set__________ No._____

Amt. milk___________ No. cheese_____ Milk per cheese________

Producer of milk_______________

Apparent cleanliness of milk_______________

+Acidity:+

Before adding starter____________________

After adding starter____________________

After acidity period____________________

Whey at dipping_______________

+Starter:+

Kind_______________ Age_____ Amt_____

+Color:+

Amount_______________

+Curdling:+

Temperature used__________

Amount of rennet__________

Time at which rennet is added__________

Time at which milk is curdled__________

Time of curdling__________

Quality of curd____________________

+Dipping:+

Cut or uncut_______________

Amt. of cutting_______________

+Draining:+