Saga (Blue brie)

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Brett_Bellmore

Me and my better half.
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Has anybody had success making Saga? My 9 year old has discovered brie, and since Saga is just a blue brie, I thought I'd try my hand at making some with him.

Actually, my thought was that I'd fill one mold as brie, and while filling the other mold sprinkle in some crumbles of blue cheese as I went along, to inoculate it. Does this seem feasible?
 
I am responding with my ignorance on my sleeve but I think that that MAY be feasible. I say "may" because most people, I think, tend to inoculate the milk rather than the curds in the first instance (and that may be because adding clumps of culture to the curd may not enable the culture to spread enough to produce a cheese that is through and through "blue"). To mix the p. roqueforti through the cheese you might simply scrape some of the culture from your blue cheese and dissolve or mix that in some milk (say one cup) and allow that cup to stand at room temperature for a day or so and then add that cup to the milk you are turning into cheese and allow the larger batch of milk to ripen.
 
I am responding with my ignorance on my sleeve but I think that that MAY be feasible. I say "may" because most people, I think, tend to inoculate the milk rather than the curds in the first instance (and that may be because adding clumps of culture to the curd may not enable the culture to spread enough to produce a cheese that is through and through "blue"). To mix the p. roqueforti through the cheese you might simply scrape some of the culture from your blue cheese and dissolve or mix that in some milk (say one cup) and allow that cup to stand at room temperature for a day or so and then add that cup to the milk you are turning into cheese and allow the larger batch of milk to ripen.

That's what I would likely do, but I plan on splitting the batch between regular brie and Saga, (My son loves brie, but is not a fan of blue cheeses.) and I don't want to have to tie up multiple containers. Also, should the blue mold not thrive, the crumbles should at least add some flavor.

If you've eaten Saga, it generally looks like an ordinary brie from the outside, with a bit of veining in the interior. Based on some wedges I've gotten that weren't remotely mature, (This is happening so often as to motivate my making my own!) it appears that they inoculate it at several places in the interior of the wheel. Dropping crumbles in while filling the mold looked like a good way to accomplish that.

I'll update this when I start work on it; I'm waiting on my quarterly bonus in a week or two, to buy a mini-fridge to serve as my "cave", and I've got some other necessities to buy, too. Earliest I can start the cheese is the 28th.

I've been putting my wife through college, she graduates the end of July. That's kind of limited my budget for food experiments...
 
I've heard of blue brie, but I haven't heard of it called a Saga.

I do like blue cheeses, and I do like to make brie and camemberts. The problem with these very soft creamy cheeses is they have a short window where they are just right to eat. When I make them, I have to be prepared to eat all of them in the same week. I usually make 3 camembert and the same time. I don't think I would want to eat 3 blue cheeses that fast.

I wonder how to get the O2 in the cheese in order to grow the mold? With hard blues, you pierce. I think on those soft cheeses the holes would close right back up again.
 
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