White mold, people.
Say it with me…WHITE…MOLD!
A week or so ago I took a peek at the undersides of the cheeses and discovered that the mold was MUCH more developed under there. The instructions for making camembert hadn’t said anything about flipping the cheese over, and maybe turning it was a given, but I hadn’t been doing it.
Until now.
I turned all the cheeses over, and as you can see in the picture above, some of the mold stuck to the bamboo mats and some stuck to the cheese. You can see the patterning from the mat – all those little lines.
Anyway, I’m leaving the cheeses like this for a week or so, just to give the undersides time to develop a bit more mold.
OH! The other nifty thing is that when I pressed gently on the moldy surfaces, there was some squishiness! It’s softening in there! Just like it’s supposed to!
I’m always so excited when things (seem to) go well.
I upped the temperature in my little fridge by just a couple of degrees to encourage (or beg) the mold to develop a tad more quickly.
I’m impatient. Especially now that it’s starting to LOOK like Camembert.
At work we were talking about the cheese (it’s so lovely to work among other food-passionate people) and I said maybe I can’t really call this Camembert, as it hasn’t been made IN the town of Camembert, which is, after all, way the heck over in France. (You know, like it sparkling wine can’t be called Champagne unless it was made in Champagne. It has to be sparkling wine in the method or style of Champagne – methode de Champagnoise or something like that.) It is, rather, a cheese made in the style of Camembert. But that’s too wordy. I could eat half the wheel of cheese faster than I can say that whole thing.
There was an appropriate suggestion to name it after the town where I live…with –bert tacked on the end. But it sounds a little funny. Adding Camem- to the beginning of my town is also odd. So my cheese is, as yet, still unnamed.
But it’s looking really good!
Well, the cheese you got out there looks really nice :) Almost as real camembert :)
Posted by: Zlew granitowy | October 30, 2012 at 10:10 AM