The Making of Great Cheeses

Cheese making transforms milk into either fresh or ripened cheese, with the aging process ranging from weeks to years. The fırst 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 scientifıc 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. The goal of this two-part series is to paint a conceptual picture in which the microbiology of cheese making is seen to fıt closely with other, basic cheese making practices and the scientifıc principles that underpin them. In part one, we focus on the early steps in making cheese, where the chemistry and physical properties are set for the subsequentmicrobiologically driven ripening phase.