In January of 2024, a rash of headlines breathlessly reported a cheesemaking “crisis” based on the news that manufacturers of the mold powders used in commercial cheesemaking are starting to have difficulty getting the molds to produce new spores. This issue is especially acute with white molds, but blue molds are starting to see some challenges as well. In this interview with Josh Windsor, we dig into the science behind the headlines–and what it really means for cheeses of the future.
Isabella Chen is one of a growing number of artisan cheesemakers around the Pacific Rim whose mastery of European-style cheeses and fluency in their own native cuisines are combining to take cheesemaking in interesting new directions. In this fascinating episode, we hear about the challenges–and tantalizing opportunities–of merging different culinary techniques and traditions.
Cheese in ancient China? Yes! From the early Bronze Age until early modern times, dairy products have been a part of Chinese life–and sourced from all kinds of animals, including some we don’t normally think of as dairy animals. In this interview with Dr Miranda Brown, we get a glimpse into the world of traditional Chinese cheesemaking.
Praise for stretching: not just something you offer your dog. Long, glossy ribbons of fresh, warm cheese curd get transformed into balls, braids, wheels and spindles all around the world. Great for snacks, melting on pizza or tortillas, grilling and frying, or stuffing in pastry–stretched curd cheeses are a favorite everywhere they’re made!
As Swiss cows head up into the high Alpine pastures for the summer, Swiss cheese aficionado Caroline Hostettler tells us all about alpage–the practice of making cheese right in the pasture where the animals graze and are milked!
Cheese can be eaten at any age! Nearly any age person can eat it–but also cheese itself can be eaten little more than an hour or two after milk leaves the udder.
In this episode we talk about Cheeses for the Impatient–some of the oldest types of cheese in the world, yet still the most widely eaten today. They’re especially flavorful and fresh-tasting in Spring, so now is a great time to explore.
In this episode I talk to Perry Wakeman, Britain’s first Affineur of the Year, and Head of Cheese at Cambridge-based affinage house Rennet & Rind, to answer everyone’s first question: What the heck is an affineur?
Perry answers that and a whole lot more — from the wackiest happenings he’s encountered in a cheese cave to some of the most moving moments in his life in artisan cheese.
(Re)sources
Aging Gracefully – a brief overview of what affinage is and why it’s done, with some notes about the use of natural caves
Affinage 101 – another overview that complements both Aging Gracefully and Perry’s British take on affinage with comments from a US affineur
I have a real dislike of the phrase “aged like milk” when used to indicate something aged poorly. Because aging milk is what produces interesting, complex cheese. Not all cheeses are aged, of course, and there’s something to be said for cheeses that showcase the sweet creaminess of fresh milk and pasture. But as a means of storing complete proteins for use in times of year when fresh foods are less available, it’s hard to grow wrong with cheese.
How the cheese is stored makes all the difference in the ultimate flavor of the cheese, and even its texture. Here are several cheeses, all of the same type, from the same dairy, which were sent out to several different aging facilities.
The grey/brown things in front of the cheeses are the bandage wrappings that they aged in. As you can see, in different spaces, they grew different types of molds — and some have more mold, others less.
You can read about the variations in flavor and texture between these separated-at-birth twins in this Twitter thread.
Leaving aside the cheeses that are essentially desiccated and kept away from moisture–common in the more arid regions in the world–aging a cheese is an ongoing dance of managing the microbial environment in which the cheese lives and breathes on its way to maturity. Different cheese types require different environments: some like things slightly warmer, others a bit cooler. Sometimes a cheese will spend a few weeks in a warmer space to develop certain yeasts and molds, and then move to a cooler one to allow the interior to ripen slowly. Surface-ripened cheeses such as bloomies and washed rinds tend to want more humid environments–95% humidity is common–while natural rinds do better at ~85% humidity. Temperature and humidity are two key variables that affect which microbes, yeasts and molds will be thriving in the air in the aging space, how effectively they may colonize the surface of the cheese, and even which ones will be able to develop within the curd itself.
The other part of affinage–that’s the art and science of aging cheese to perfection–is hands-on human intervention. Cheeses breathe. The younger they are, the more moisture they exude. Here, for example, is a box in which a brand-new cheese had been sitting overnight, lid slightly ajar. Guess where the cheese was sitting within the box?
In this week’s Episode 15 (out on Friday), affineur Perry Wakeman talks a lot about turning cheeses, because flipping large English-type cheeses–anywhere between 10-50 pounds–is hard work. And as you can see, the side that’s facing up gives off a lot of moisture. The bottom side tries to as well, but doesn’t have the airflow that the top does–so depending on what sort of shelving it’s sitting on, the bottom side can get moldy or slimy if left too long in one place. So cheeses need to be turned regularly to ensure even moisture throughout the cheese, and an even rind. There’s quite a lot of attention paid to the rind and managing what’s growing on it, as well.
The aging space is most often referred to in European-style cheesemaking as “the cave”, because the sedentary peoples in western Eurasia have long made use of natural caves for storing and slowly aging a variety of foods: cheese, wine, olive oil, cured meats, etc. (No big surprise that these foods tend to all show up together in the cuisines of people who make them.) Natural caves offer cool, relatively consistent temperatures and high humidity, which turn out to be just the sort of conditions cheese cultures like best. Of course, there are only so many caves available, and in some regions there are more than others. And they can be homes to a variety of other non-microbial beasts as well, which tends to give modern food regulators pause. So thanks to modern refrigeration technology, plenty of affinage is done in purpose-built warehouses today.
When a cheese ages, the cultures that are in the milk are always interacting with those in the surrounding air, so that surrounding microbiome is critical. A human-built cave is somewhat easier to clean than a natural one: perhaps too easy–if you clean your cave too thoroughly, you lose the microbiome that has been built up in the cave by successive generations of the cheese that have inhabited it. But even in built caves, as Perry describes, some surprising things can happen.
The microbiome of natural caves can be exponentially more complex. I was completely sold on the natural cave effect when we visited the Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, England several years back: they usefully provide very clear-cut A/B testing. =) Cheesemaking had actually died out in the gorge in the mid 20th century, but a new creamery opened there in 2003. The gorge is pockmarked with numerous natural caves. In fact, this is the site of Gough’s Cave, where the mesolithic Cheddar Man, as well as some earlier humans, were buried, 9-14,000 years ago. (They all lived before domesticated ruminants arrived in England–no cheese for them.) When we visited in 2007, the creamery had just gotten permission to age cheese in Gough’s Cave a few months prior. And WOW. I’m not generally a huge fan of cheddar; I don’t like it sharp for the sake of sharpness, and often find it rather “one note”. But! The cave-aged cheddar is nothing like even the same creamery’s “modern-aged” cheeses, even with all other inputs being the same. It’s slightly crumbly, but still creamy, with a huge variety of flavors and just a slight sharpness at the end to cleanse the palate. There’s a nice video that shows the whole cheesemaking process they use, including what the cave-aged cheeses look like in comparison with the standard version. You see the beginning of the affinage process at 4:45, and then at 6:04 you’ll see the texture difference between the cave-aged and the “vintage” storeroom-aged versions.
In fact, two caves in the same valley or hillside can have notably different microbiomes. Here’s an excerpt from great article about the mix of natural and artificial caves used in the production of Saint-Nectaire, a washed rind cheese from south-central France:
Another article about a cave in Transylvania (complete with a greedy count!) talks about the particular strains of B Linens native to that cave which are responsible for the particular flavors of Năsal cheese.
One of the things Perry and I got into a bit is the evolving nature of the business of affinage. Traditionally, cheese producers aged their own goods in caves or cellars they owned. This was true of small farmstead producers, as well as the large estates and abbeys who produced cheeses in large quantities. Urban cheesemongers would have appropriately cool and humid storage facilities, but expected to receive nearly finished cheeses, banking on fast turnover in order to keep their stock levels manageable. Now, affineurs are becoming important middleman businesses, both aging cheeses that they receive shortly after their production in specially optimized facilities, and acting as distributors for those cheeses.
There’s lots more to learn about affinage in Episode 15. Perry’s love of his craft is incredibly infectious, and his answer to my final question was very moving. I hope you enjoy the interview.
Leaves of edible plants are used to wrap foods in many different cultures. In warm regions, from Central America, to SE Asia and southern India, corn husks and banana leaves wrap tamales and other meat-starch fillings and sometimes serves as plates. Slightly further north, the Chinese fill lotus leaves with sticky rice and little bits of meat & quail eggs. Further north again, variations on stuffed cabbage are common across northern Eurasia.
Western Europe is kind of an anomaly when it comes to leaves: there aren’t many dishes that use them as wrappings…except for cheese!
Since we’re entering Spring and trees are leafing out again, it seemed a good time to look at the use of leaves in cheesemaking.
Small, soft cheeses are perhaps the cheeses most commonly aged in leaf wrappings, especially in the Mediterranean countries. Common leaf choices include chestnut, grape and fig, which are all readily available in those regions. Chestnuts are often associated with cold weather and Christmastime in English-speaking countries, and indeed they grow in a fairly wide range of climates, but they used to be everywhere in southern Europe–especially in the hills and other marginal land where goats and sheep also thrive. In early medieval Italy, some landlords even provided incentives to tenants to grow the trees, which provided a (nutritionally limited) flour alternative for those who couldn’t grow wheat, as well as bark that could be used in tanning hides. No surprise that their leaves would be a common choice for local herders.
Now, one of the reasons fig, grape and chestnut leaves are popular, besides their ubiquity in the Mediterranean, is their size: just big enough to wrap a hockey puck in one leaf. Hockey puck-sized cheeses are common in southern Europe, especially Provence, because the dry, often hilly terrain is best suited to raising goats and sheep, which give relatively small volumes of milk compared to cattle. So if you’re a small farmer without enormous herds–especially in the days before refrigeration, when you pretty much had to make cheese shortly after milking your animals each day–smaller cheeses make a lot of sense. Of course, you can also use smaller types of leaves, in which case you’ll just use several to enclose the entirety of the cheese.
One can use leaves from any type of non-toxic plant. Lemon and orange leaves are lovely. Maple is a current favorite of several New England cheesemakers. (Temperate North America was once rich in chestnut trees as well, until a blight in the early 1900s nearly wiped them out. Gastropod has a great episode on the American chestnut.) Down in the southwestern US, hoja santa (aka Mexican pepper) leaf is becoming a trendy choice. I’ve also used cherry and blackberry leaves.
Smaller cheeses will dry out faster than larger ones, which is why many are eaten young, around 2-3 weeks old. With a small cheese, you obviously don’t want to wind up with more rind than paste, so aging it means balancing just enough time to develop flavor while avoiding dryness or mold development. That’s where the leaves come in: they help keep the cheese in its own moist little bubble as it ages, so no rind forms. And since the leaves are usually soaked in alcohol, molds don’t have hospitable surfaces to grow on.
Larger, longer-aged cheeses often have natural rinds, but there are also larger cheeses that are wrapped in several larger leaves, like the award-winning Rogue River Blue (grape leaves), its Spanish counterpart Valdeon (maple or chestnut), and Cornish Yarg, coated in nettles (more on nettles in a minute).
The way you use the leaves is to steam or blanche them a bit, then plunge them into ice water. This softens the more rigid fibers in the leaf, making it easier to fold, and also kills yeasts and other unwanted things that would affect the cheese in unwanted ways.
Then you let them air dry and macerate them in some kind of eau de vie to preserve them, so they don’t start rotting while you’re aging your cheese. Brandy is a common choice, but any high-proof liquor will work.
Fresh goat milk has a slightly lemony flavor, so I’m rather fond of using lemon leaves for wrappers. I soak a few lemons in a pint of vodka for a week or two, and then soak the lemon leaves in the lemon vodka.
Young, moist cheeses such as banons absorb the flavors of the leaves rather well, though some leaf types (ahem, blackberry) impart a much stronger flavor than others (whispers, cherry). If the cheese is left to age for a while, the character of the fruit flavor will also undergo aging: a young goat cheese wrapped in fig leaves will have a faintly sweet, floral flavor, but nothing that screams “Figs!”. But give it a couple of months, and it begins tasting specifically of dried figs.
Some leaves have another use in cheesemaking: as a source of plant rennet. Some plant rennets come from flowers, such as thistle rennet (discussed a lot in Ep 6). Fig sap has been used as a coagulant in the Mediterranean since ancient times. Lady’s bedstraw, a plant with bright yellow flowers, can be used as rennet by crushing the stalks, flowers and/or leaves. It also turns things yellow, so was used to enhance the color of both butter and cheese in medieval northwestern Europe (now annatto, a dye made from the seeds of a Mesoamerican plant, is used instead). There’s nettle leaf rennet. And in West Africa, a few different types of leaves are used for rennet as well.
Into The Curdverse 
