Mold can take on the most adventurous colors and shapes on cheese, sometimes making the cheese look like a small, hairy animal... but in most cases, the mold isn't harmful; it's entirely intentional. Just think of the white mold on Camembert or the many delicious blue cheeses...
Using various French and Italian raw milk cheeses as examples, this film explains what types of mold exist and whether you can eat it or not. Enjoy watching, and don't be afraid of mold!
Here are a few hard facts at a glance:
- The well-known white mold (as found in Camembert, Brie, Chaource, etc.) is called Penicillium candidum . It is sprayed onto the cheese and stored in a way that allows the white mold to grow perfectly. This mold is therefore entirely intentional and harmless, and should definitely be consumed.
- Blue mold , such as in Roquefort or Bleu d'Auvergne, is also a deliberate and deliberately added mold. In this case, it's Penicillium Roqueforti . The mold spores are added to the milk during cheesemaking, and as with white mold, every effort is made to ensure optimal mold growth. Since the blue mold is found inside the cheese, it naturally doesn't occur to anyone to remove it; they simply eat it and enjoy it.
- Other harmless types of mold that form spontaneously on some cheeses, such as mature goat cheese or Brin d'Amour, are found in the ripening cellars and settle on the cheese – the blue-green ones are also Penicillium .
- The so-called Mucor Mucedo , also a Penicillium , can take on all shades of white, gray, and black and is quite hairy. In cheesemaking jargon, it's called poil de chat (cat hair) . It looks wild, but is completely harmless and completely safe. If it bothers you visually, you can easily press it down with your fingers.
- The white, fluffy, mold-like texture on cheeses like Saint-Marcellin isn't mold. Rather, it's yeast cultures .
- Red-smeared cheeses with their sticky rinds don't grow mold due to the daily washing with brine, but rather a bacterium – Bacterium Linens . This is what gives the rind its red color and its flavor. Definitely worth eating :-)
- On some cheeses, such as the Italian Salva Cremasco, but also on many Tommette varieties, neon yellow or neon orange spots appear. These are various good mold species that cannot be cultivated artificially and are a sign that the cheese in question comes from traditional, artisanal cheese production and from a maturation cellar containing many natural materials such as wood and stone.
