The Making of Great Cheeses: The first steps in making great cheeses involve building the right physical and chemical environment to support microbial ripening

Abstract

Cheese making transforms milk into either fresh or ripened cheese, with the aging process ranging from weeks to years. The first days establish the chemical characteristics of the cheese before it begins to age, setting the stage for microbial ripening. Of the plethora of organisms in new cheese, some remain viable and may proliferate during aging, others will be suppressed, while still others may be suppressed initially and then favored or vice versa, depending on the chemical environment to which they are subject. To add to this complexity, the chemical environment within the cheese may change dramatically as ripening progresses. Much of this complexity can be reduced to a few scientific principles that cheese makers vary systematically to achieve a wide range of outcomes. The historical development of distinctly different cheese varieties involved modulating these basic principles.

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Identifiers

DOI

10.1128/MICROBE.8.361.1

Journal

Microbe Magazine

Year

2013