Ever notice how a piece of cheese left out in the heat for too long forms tiny beads on its surface? Those are beads of milk fat. Other flavorful compounds present in cheese are mostly intentional by-products of bacteria and aging.Īs cheese is heated, the first part to go is the fat, which begins melting at around 90☏. Salt can have a profound effect on the texture-saltier cheeses have had more moisture drawn out of the curd before being pressed, so they tend to be drier and firmer. Salt and other flavorings make up the rest of the cheese.These micelles link together into long chains, forming a matrix that gives the cheese its structure.
These proteins come together headfirst in bundles of several thousand, protecting their hydrophobic heads and exposing their hydrophillic tails to their watery surroundings. Individual milk proteins (the main ones are four similar molecules called caseins) resemble little tadpoles with hydrophobic (water-avoiding) heads, and hydrophillic (water-seeking) tails. Protein micelles are spherical bundles of milk proteins.Because of this, and because of their suspension, these tiny globules don't come into contact with each other to form larger globules: cheeses stay creamy or crumbly, instead of greasy. Milk fat in solid cheese is dispersed in the form of microscopic globules kept suspended in a tight matrix of protein micelles (more on those in a second).Famous hard cheeses, like Parmigiano-Reggiano and Pecorino Romano, may contain as little as 30 percent water after several years of aging. The longer a cheese is aged, the more moisture it loses, and the harder it becomes. Young cheeses like jack, young cheddars, and mozzarella have a relatively high water content-up to 80 percent.
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