In Swiss cheese making the curd is lifted out of the vat with a strong cloth
Curing and Salting.—The cheese is first placed in a curing room above ground and heated in winter. After a few weeks it is removed to the cellar. Sometimes three to five cheese are piled one on the top of the other for a few days with a few handfuls of salt between them. The salting proper is done by rubbing and brushing dry salt and the brine formed from same into the cheese,—altogether 4 to 5 lbs. of salt to 100 lbs. of cheese. Every day it is rubbed with a dry rag and the cheese is turned and salted on the other side until the salt is thoroughly incorporated.
Swiss cheese press
The cheese is cured for at least 100 days in the factory and is usually stored for another three to six months by the dealer before it is ready for the consumer.
Roquefort.—The French Roquefort is inoculated with a mold from stale bread which spreads through the cheese and produces the peculiar flavor of this type. It is made from sheep’s milk and was formerly cured in cool subterranean caverns, but now in elaborate curing houses. In this country imitation Roquefort is made of cow’s milk and cured in cold storage.
It should be remembered, however, that sheep’s milk is very rich in fat and that a rich Roquefort that will compare favorably with the genuine cannot be made from cow’s milk without an addition of cream if sheep’s or goat’s milk is not available. In France a small addition of cow’s milk to the sheep’s milk—not to exceed 10%—is often used.
Around Roquefort a milk ewe produces on an average 135 lbs. of milk a year, which makes up to 35 lbs. of cheese.
Milking the ewes at Roquefort, France (G. Ellbrecht)