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Before 1862, when Louis Pasteur determined that heating and refrigerating milk could kill harmful pathogens, all cheese was made with raw milk. Since then there has been continuing pressure to pasteurize all milk products, though in 1949 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration OK’d the use of raw milk for cheese as long as the cheese was aged 60 days. As Judy Schad of Indiana-based Capriole Farmstead Goat Cheeses explained in a presentation at Pastoral the other night, a 60-day aging period ensures that “good” bacteria overgrows “bad” bacteria, such as listeria and salmonella, which are also destroyed as the cheese product becomes progressively more acidic.
As part of her presentation, Schad walked us through a number of cheeses; two that stood out for me were the Grayson from Meadow Creek Dairy and Mont Saint Francis under Schad’s own Capriole label, both raw milk products. These are some serious cheeses: if you search “stinky” on the Web site for Artisanal Premium Cheeses, these two are at the top of the list.
