Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Did you hear about the explosion at the cheese factory? Basically, Basic Cheese is
Acidic. What?!
There was de brie everywhere! The basic steps in cheesemaking are: add-
ing beneficial bacteria to milk, coagulating
the milk into a soft white substance called
B
a dum bump. Thank you, thank you— dried out and sat for weeks? I’m going to eat curd, and pressing and cutting curd into the
we’ll be here all article. Now, get that!” And when they survived, proto-cheese finished cheese shape. But to get a delicious
ready for some cheesy science and was born. final product, the milk must be at the right
maybe a few more cheesy jokes. Humans have used practical knowledge of temperature and the right pH at the right time.
We love cheese. Love it, love it, love it. And chemistry and biology to preserve food for “You cannot fully understand cheese and
we are eating more of it—in the past 30 years, millennia, long before refrigeration and other cheesemaking unless you understand acidity
the average cheese consumed per person in modern technology. To make cheese, bacteria and pH,” says Paul Kindstedt, professor at
the United States has increased 41%, up to 36 digest sugars in milk and produce lactic acid. the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese, in
pounds of cheese per person. Mozzarella con- The additional lactic acid lowers the pH and Burlington, Vt.
sumption was up 178% in the same period. hinders the growth of harmful organisms. The pH measures the concentration of
But cheese is kind of weird. It is storable By turning milk into cheese, its shelf life is hydrogen ions (H+) in a solution, with most
milk. It can last weeks or years longer than extended from about three weeks to two solutions between the range of 0 and 14.
milk and there is such a variety of cheese. decades, or even longer. The more acidic the solution, the lower the
But when did we start eating cheese? We All cheese starts as milk. The pH, with 7 considered “neutral” and above 7,
don’t know the exact origin but at some point, primary sources are milk from cows, goats, “basic.” Milk has a pH between 6.6 and 6.7.
THOM GLICK; RS GRAPHX, INC.; VIDEO LINK: HTTPS://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=RTTKPPFNKMY
someone must have thought, “You know that and sheep, though other mammals such as pH is a logarithmic scale, so one unit differs
stuff at the bottom of the milk? That stuff that water buffalo are also used around the world by a factor of 10. A pH of 6 has ten times the
for milk production. H+ concentration than a solution with a pH
Figure 1. Cow’s milk compared to hard cheddar. Cow’s milk is mostly water; cheesemaking removes much of the water and concentrates the remaining fat,
protein, and other components.
M
quite significant. any lactose-intolerant people can eat aged extend in all directions and interlock
To make cheese, milk is pumped into a cheese without discomfort. In the cheesemaking into a three-dimensional matrix to
large tank and warmed to the right tem- process, the bacterial cultures ferment milk’s trap the milk-fat molecules. The
perature. Two different bacteria are used in lactose to produce lactic acid. The longer more acidic the milk (the lower
this process: mesophilic and thermophilic a cheese ages, the less lactose is left the pH), the faster this coagulation
bacteria. Mesophilic bacteria grow best in over because it’s been occurs and the firmer the curd.
moderate temperatures, typically between used by the bacteria. Rennet is found in a calf’s
20 and 45°C (68 and 113 °F). They are By the time an aged stomach—its fourth stomach.
used to make mellow cheeses such as cheddar or Parme- How were rennet’s properties dis-
cheddar, gouda, and Colby. Thermophilic san is ready to eat, covered? Enzymes weren’t known
bacteria thrive between 45 and 122 °C (113 hardly any lactose about then. It is thought that an
and 252 °F) and are used to make sharper remains in the earlier forbear noticed that milk
cheeses such as Gruyère, Parmesan, and cheese. would prematurely curdle in con-
romano. tainers made from calf stomach.
In the tank, the bacteria ferment Added pieces of dried stomach or
the sugar present in milk, called lactose an extract had the same effect and a cheese
into the final cheese shape. Raymond, Neb. “You need to understand the [accessed Sept 2017].
science and have measurement tools, but you Lactose Intolerance: Causes. Mayo Clinic, Feb 9,
While all milk starts at about points in their development. This information Sarah Mullen Gilbert is a science writer who lives
in Iowa Falls, Iowa. This is her first article in
the same pH, and most cheeses guides the timing of steps in the process. ChemMatters.