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The Naked Valencay

11/29/2012

Kelly blogged yesterday about our killer Valencay cheeses in the cave this week. She was right. Nobody is likely to die, but after turning the cheeses tonight, I'm super excited. These Valencays are absolutely spot on!!

Tonight's update is in honor of the ugly stepchild - the Naked Valencay. I call it naked because I had to remove its outer coat. It's one of those cheesy science experiments from the previous over-humidified Valencays. For these ugly ducklings (pictured here), I pulled the skin off as it had started to slip and break down, and I was left with little white goat cheese truffles. They are smelling good (in cheese terms) and are firming up nicely. They should be ready for tasting this weekend. Time will tell if this little accident will either create something worth replicating or worth adding to the trash.

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

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Do I tell them it’s not pasteurized?

11/28/2012

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So we haven’t had this dilemma yet. But the day is fast approaching. We recently produced a Valencay without pasteurizing the goat milk prior to beginning the cheese making process. This Valencay is looking really promising. We already don’t go into details with friends about the cheese making process. We have pasteurized all our other cheeses and we haven’t told them that the cheese they are consuming sits on our kitchen countertop for several days prior to it going into a 55 degree cheese cave (a converted wine fridge) where it sits for a few more weeks.

Enter level two: non-pasteurization. Louis Pasteur originally conceived pasteurization as a way of preventing wine and beer from souring. In 1891 the first pasteurizers were installed in a US milk processing plant and cheese has been around much longer, so pasteurization can’t be essential to making cheese. In this day and age of hand sanitizers, are my friends ready for our Valencay? Tonight my husband declared this Valencay as our best batch ever (and it isn’t pasteurized).

So my friends, will you sample my cheese? It’s killer…

Kelly Wensing, www.cheesedesert.com

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Primordial Ooze

11/27/2012

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The ooze of tonight's Reblechon at temperature.

Abiogenesis is the theory of how biological life could arise from inorganic matter through natural processes. This Darwinian spontaneous generation theory utilized a concept of Primordial Soup or Primordial Ooze as the basis by saying that this "ooze" or "soup" was a collection of key ingredients needing only the right catalyst to spontaneously generate living matter. Lost yet? Well, this sounds an awful lot like the beauty of the chemistry behind oozy, ripening cheese. Cheese is nothing more than a collection of ingredients and conditions that appear to just spontaneously form, grow, and break down. And amazingly enough, many of the ingredients described by early scientists as being necessary for Primordial Ooze (ammonia, phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc) are key to the creation of ooze in cheese. That's not all. There are more primordial connections to this story.

Guess who finally dispelled the theory of Abiogenesis (or spontaneous generation)? It was none other than Milk's Grandfather, Louis Pasteur himself. That's right. Pasteur conducted bacterial experiments (along the way to his pasteurization process) that proved that generation from static compounds or combinations cannot occur without reaction from an outside living force (in his case, outside bacteria). Pasteur said the following in 1864 after his biogenesis experiments with bacteria, "Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow struck by this simple experiment." And just like that, Darwin had begun to lose key scientific ground. His nemesis...ooze.

But wait, there's more! Just when we thought Primordial Ooze was a dead theory, scientists studying the deep oceans still coin the phase "Primordial Ooze" to represent the layer of ooze at the bottom of deep oceans (2 miles or more deep). Historically connected to Abiogenesis, this "ooze" today is a combination of decomposing plant material and animal matter, silt, ingredients like ammonia, phosphorus, sulfur, and of course salt (sound familiar?). Of course there are still theorists that claim many of the great unsolved scientific mysteries surrounding origins of life have yet to be explained because the answers lie hidden underwater. It's hard to argue that point when thousands of new species are discovered every year in the deep oceans, and-

WAIT!!

What's this got to do with cheese you say?

It's simple. Ooze is gross, cool, yucky, sticky, fun, ever so mysterious, and for whatever reason scientifically significant. It can gross us out or excite us, and scientists in multiple disciplines have tried to argue that all life itself came from ooze. Some scientists say deep-ocean ooze represents origins of our species, and other simply credit it as the lifeblood of a healthy ocean (settling and upwelling). And then there is Louis. Louis Pasteur studied ooze with great intention, and today's cheese would not be the same without his "ooze-work". And last but not least, cheese fans will tell you that the gooey ooze of a perfectly ripe cheese can be a wonderful reason for living.

Now, time to go finish that Reblechon...

Tommy Reddicks
www.cheesedesert.com

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Ashes to Ashes - Goat to Goat

11/26/2012

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The Valencay cheese is a peculiar goat's milk cheese. Not only does it need to sit out at room temperature for up to 72 hours, it then gets coated with ash (see our latest young Valencay cheeses from this evening's ashing). Most of us think of milk products turning into monstrous moldy nightmares after being left at room temp for 3 days. But, milk is a curious thing.

I'm always left wondering who invented cheeses like these. But when you think about what folks had back in the old days (middle ages) it actually makes sense. In a time of no refrigeration, milk was left to turn into all sorts of interesting things (good or bad). Eventually, hunger and economy took over and what didn't kill you became tomorrow's dinner.

So, let's give a shout out to the folks who tried the old gross sticky, moldy, milk! Way to go old guys and gals! Those of you who navigated day-to-day milk roulette and intestinal trauma paved the way for cheese freaks worldwide to make really smelly stuff that not only tastes good, but won't kill you!

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Does my cheese stink too much?

11/25/2012

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Things are truly special when our cheese cave is opened for each day's washing and turning. The smell takes over the kitchen and wafts upstairs to the 2nd level.In my most sweaty teenage days, my feet never had such a stout impact on the home. That's special stuff! But, the question remains, "What is a good cheese smell (gloriously stinky) verses a bad (harmful) cheese smell?"

The answer is fairly simple. If it smells sulfuric, or ammoniated, it's gone over to the dark side. If it smells like bad socks, it's probably good. There is an aromatic "old moldy house" quality to stinky cheese that is an acquired taste (for the nose that is). Happy scenting!

Tommy Reddicks & Kelly Wensing
www.cheesedesert.com

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The Naked Valencay

Do I tell them it’s not pasteurized?

Primordial Ooze

Ashes to Ashes - Goat to Goat

Does my cheese stink too much?

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