# hand-washed rinds - and a bunch of other sundry questions



## kuwaha (Aug 22, 2009)

I made my first hand-washed rind cheese the other week, a gruyere. Been washing twice a week with a salt solution. There's some whitish mold and a bit of brownish/orangish mold on it. Am I supposed to be trying to keep all molds off it or just the bad ones :biggrin ? and how can I tell???
I'll try to run down and get a pic later, thanks!!

Oh I knew I had another question - I just made some camembert. The first time I used the Goats Produce Too recipe which called for salting all the edges and then spraying with pc. This time I used Margaret Morris' recipe with the p.c. stirred into the milk, and then after moulding salting on the top and bottom. But now I'm worried - do I need to salt the sides? and is it ok to keep this cheese in the same fridge as the natural rind cheese? (I have a small dorm-type fridge dedicated to cheese - though tomorrow I hope to get a full-size one up and running!!)

I got started reading "Fabrication of Farmstead Cheeses " again the other day.... oh man am I full of dreams and questions!!! 

Here's another one - when you roll a cheese in ash do you eat the ash? :lol


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## Rose (Oct 26, 2007)

Is your salt solution strong enough? I'd be washing it more often, too.

On the Camembert, I'd salt the sides, too. All the surfaces. 

I have brie mold growing on some of my cheddar, too, because I grew them in the same fridge. I don't worry about it.

Dunno about the ash.


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## linuxboy (Oct 26, 2009)

kuwaha said:


> I made my first hand-washed rind cheese the other week, a gruyere. Been washing twice a week with a salt solution. There's some whitish mold and a bit of brownish/orangish mold on it. Am I supposed to be trying to keep all molds off it or just the bad ones :biggrin ? and how can I tell???


Yes, with gruyere, you use a saturated brine to form a hard, impenetrable rind. Rind formation by curd knitting by pressing with a follower and using fine cheese cloth is crucial. When you take those hot curds with a high pH, they have a natural affinity to fuse together. All the calcium acts like cement. And the follower and high weight and smooth cheesecloth give the rind a fantastic even finish with no creases or cracks or other ways for bacteria or molds to get inside the cheese, into the cheese paste.

So you wind up with a cheese rind that's uniform and even, and then an outer rind layer that has almost no moisture and instead has a heavy salt concentration gradient. On that type of rind very few molds can survive. The ones that do survive get washed away with a brine solution very easily. After that rind forms, gruyere doesn't need so much washing.

To answer your question, yes keep the molds away. Some, like mycodore, will persist because they survive the salt concentration, but they grow very slowly and only on the very outer edge as a fine layer.


> Oh I knew I had another question - I just made some camembert. The first time I used the Goats Produce Too recipe which called for salting all the edges and then spraying with pc.


Spraying is not terrible, but really is best suited for commercial applications. It's a somewhat outdated method. It's better to add to the milk, this produces more consistent and better results. Adding to milk incorporates molds inside the curd, so maturation is both from outside in, and slowly inside. Then you can use a lower ripening temp and achieve longer shelf life.


> This time I used Margaret Morris' recipe with the p.c. stirred into the milk, and then after moulding salting on the top and bottom. But now I'm worried - do I need to salt the sides?


Yes. P candidum requires about .8% salt to take off. If you can, brining works better than salting for cam (15-20 mins per side at saturated brine). You get more even salt distribution and more even affinage and more even pH gradient in the cheese.


> and is it ok to keep this cheese in the same fridge as the natural rind cheese? (I have a small dorm-type fridge dedicated to cheese - though tomorrow I hope to get a full-size one up and running!!)


Yes, but in an aging chamber. Keep it in a separate tupperware and have air circulation all around the cheese. Put it on a plastic mat or piece of eggcrate. Flip daily. Humidity needs to be high, oxygen needs to be high for first 10 days for mold to take off.


> I got started reading "Fabrication of Farmstead Cheeses " again the other day.... oh man am I full of dreams and questions!!!


That's fantastic. That's a great read - from farmer to farmer type help. 


> Here's another one - when you roll a cheese in ash do you eat the ash? :lol


Yes, you can't taste it or feel it. When I make ash I grind and filter it so fine that it's like an ultrafine powder, like powdered sugar. I wash my ash so it's tasteless. It's really just for decoration and help the mold to prevent slipskin.


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## kuwaha (Aug 22, 2009)

Wow thanks for all that info - 
Got one more question about the natural rind cheeses - what other types of cheese can you make with a natural rind? And what is the best procedure?


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## linuxboy (Oct 26, 2009)

kuwaha said:


> Wow thanks for all that info -
> Got one more question about the natural rind cheeses - what other types of cheese can you make with a natural rind? And what is the best procedure?


There are 6+ common rind treatments that are considered natural

1) Brine wash only, hard outer rind crust, brine used for maintenance and to impart color. This is your alpine family: beaufort, gruyere, etc

2) Smear rind with b linens. This is your classic "stinky" cheese. Includes port salut, limburger, trappist cheeses, American brick, muenster, etc. These cheese use a surface neutralizer yeast or mold, then b linens and 3% brine wash. Sometimes higher salinity brine is used to kill off yeasts and geotrichum molds.

3) Bloomy rind where enzymes from mold give primary flavor characteristic. These are your traditional bloomy rind cheeses like camembert and lactic curd bloomy cheeses (st maure, boucheron, crottin etc). I group them together even though classically they are not too similar. Often lactic bloomy rind cheese in France will have very little to no p candidum and instead primarily be geotrichum.

4) Yeast rind. These are usually small lactic curd cheeses made in France using yeasts like kluyveromyces and yeast variants of Geotrichum mold, as well as micrococci for flavor.

5) Surface p roqueforti mold. You don't have to make blue cheese with blue veining. You can also use it on the surface to create a blue rind where the flavor development will be mild and limited.

6) Complex rinds for semi-firm cheeses like tomme de savoie. These range all over the place. Rind treatment here varies tremendously.

So in short, you can make any cheese with a natural rind. Some styles use specific molds. The techniques vary quite a lot among all of them. My suggestion is to pick a family and make a few styles within the family until you master it and then move on. Do not try to make all sorts of rinds at once, the learning curve is drastically steep. So many details to watch out for.


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## kuwaha (Aug 22, 2009)

"My suggestion is to pick a family and make a few styles within the family until you master it and then move on. Do not try to make all sorts of rinds at once, the learning curve is drastically steep"

aah - the voice of wisdom... gently reigning in the enthusiasm of the novice :biggrin guiding us carefully into success 

now what shall I make today???


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## linuxboy (Oct 26, 2009)

kuwaha said:


> now what shall I make today???


What cultures do you have on hand?


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## kuwaha (Aug 22, 2009)

FD, Meso 2, Thermo C, propionic, and p.candidum


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## linuxboy (Oct 26, 2009)

K, and what styles do you like to eat? Hard italian types, semi-firm European, Alpine, French lactic/bloomy rind, American cheddar/colby/jack, or something else?


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## kuwaha (Aug 22, 2009)

best cheese I ever ate was some mature cheddar I bought at farmer's market in north devon england - it was so sharp you couldn't eat it on it's own (or at least not much!) 
I don't know the difference between Alpine etc, but love bloomy rind cheeses, and tasty smooth european types (when I first moved to US I was appalled that they would call that orange stuff in the store "Cheese"  -of course it didn't help that I moved here from New Zealand where life itself is based around good dairy products  No offense intended, just a culture-clash I guess.


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## linuxboy (Oct 26, 2009)

Want to try for a bloomy rind lactic curd, Karen? They ripen faster than hard cheeses. We could also do a mixed culture cheese to make something like piave or romano. You could also try for one of the alpine variants: beaufort, gruyere, emmenthaler.


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## kuwaha (Aug 22, 2009)

I have some camembert in the fridge right now.... any other suggestions for bloomy rind? I do like the fact that they ripen faster - it's so hard to WAIT


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