Cheese, Taleggio-Style

⚠ UNTESTED — I have not made a washed rind at all. This is the family I have written up carefully and never run, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. A briefing.

Taleggio is the gentlest entry to the washed-rind family and the one I would start with. It is ripened cool and comparatively briefly, the paste stays high-moisture and sweet, and the smell — while unmistakably of this family — is nothing like a Limburger’s. If the washed rinds have put you off, this is the one that argues with you.

⭐ And its name records a piece of Alpine logistics. Taleggio belongs to the stracchino family, from Lombard stracco — tired. The milk came from cows tired at the end of the autumn descent from the alpine pastures, and that milk behaves differently: the animals were at the end of their lactation and the milk is richer and lower-yielding. A cheese named after the state of the animal that gave the milk is not a bad description of what this whole section keeps finding.

The diagnostic detail: it is square, and that is not decoration. A square has more edge for its volume than a round, and edges dry faster — which is part of why Taleggio ripens evenly at a size that would otherwise be awkward.

Ingredients

• 2 gallons whole milk (not ultra-pasteurised)
• 1/4 tsp mesophilic culture
• 1/16 tsp Brevibacterium linens
• 1/16 tsp Geotrichum candidum or a yeast blend (Debaryomyces)
• 1/2 tsp calcium chloride solution, if the milk is shop-bought
• 1/2 tsp liquid rennet, single strength, diluted in 1/4 cup cool unchlorinated water
• Saturated brine, calcium-adjusted — see Cheese Brine, Saturated
• 1 quart 3% wash brine, made fresh weekly
• 1 square mould, about 7 inches, or two smaller ones

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Warm the milk to 90 F / 32 C. Mesophilic culture, and add the surface flora to the milk as well as to the wash — a yeast blend and/or B. linens. It gives a more even start than spraying later.
2. Ripen 45 minutes, then rennet at a flocculation multiplier of 3 1/2 to 4. A moderately soft set — this family sits between the bloomy rinds and the pressed cheeses in both moisture and handling.
3. Cut to 1/2 to 3/4 inch, rest, then stir gently while raising to 96-100 F / 36-38 C over about 20 minutes. Barely a cook.
4. Drain and mould with little or no press. A square mould on a mat. Flip every half hour for the first few hours, then a few more times over 12-18 hours at 68 F / 20 C.
5. Brine briefly, or dry-salt at about 2%, then dry the surface overnight until it is tacky rather than wet.

The wash itself — this is the make.

1. • A 3% brine: 1 oz salt to a quart of water, kept in the fridge, made fresh weekly.
2. • Add the surface culture to the first two or three washes only.
3. • Wipe every face and the edge with a cloth or your hand wrung nearly dry. Damp, not soaked.
4. • Every 2-3 days for the first three weeks, then weekly.
5. • 55 F / 13 C, 95% RH throughout.
6. ⚠ You are not cleaning it, you are farming it. Wiping spreads the culture around and reopens the rind so it can breathe. A rind left alone grows the wrong things.
7. Ripen 5 to 8 weeks. The rind goes white, then pale pink, then a mottled orange with grey patches — ⚠ the grey is normal on this one and is not a fault to be scrubbed off; it is part of the traditional appearance.
8. It is ready when the paste yields under a thumb near the edge and the centre is still slightly firmer. Wrap in two-ply paper and keep cold once it is where you want it.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t 🔴 UNTESTED. ⚠ This is not Taleggio DOP, a protected cheese made in defined provinces of Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto. This is a Taleggio-style cheese.

🔴 Why the wash schedule is really a yeast schedule Brevibacterium linens — the organism that makes the orange colour, the tacky surface and the smell — needs a surface pH of roughly 5.5 and above. A cheese coming out of the mould has a rind at about 4.9. So on day one there is nothing up there that B. linens can live on, and washing it with a brine full of B. linens achieves very little.

What happens first is yeast. Debaryomyces hansenii and Geotrichum candidum are salt-tolerant and acid-tolerant, and they eat lactic acid. As they consume it the surface pH climbs, and somewhere in the first one to two weeks the rind crosses 5.5 — and only then does the bacterium you actually wanted have somewhere to grow.

⭐ So the commonest complaint about this family has a specific answer. “I washed it faithfully and it never went orange” almost always means the surface never deacidified: too dry, too cold, too salty, or the wheel over-acidified in the vat and started from too far down.

⭐ Stracchino, and a name that describes the cow Stracchino is a family of soft Lombard cheeses from stracco, tired — milk from herds tired by the seasonal descent from the alpine pastures, taken at the end of lactation. That milk is genuinely different: richer, and there is less of it. Taleggio is the most famous survivor of the group. It is worth noticing that the name records a constraint of transhumance, which is the same kind of accident this section keeps finding behind cheeses people now treat as designed.

Why start here Of the five washed rinds in this collection, Taleggio asks the least: a shorter ripening, a gentler wash schedule, and a mild result that is still unmistakably of the family. If the wash schedule beats you, you have lost eight weeks rather than six months.

Sourcing and gear ⭐ This family is the one that most rewards a cave you can actually control. 95% RH with a wipe every other day is a demanding specification, and it is the single job where the humidifier in my rebuilt fridge is doing something a basement shelf cannot.

Read alongside /cheese/makes/washed-rind/ on the site.