Mould Control
The fifth Pillar. What grows on the outside of a long cure is a decision, not an accident. Noble moulds are encouraged and wild ones excluded, because some wild moulds make toxins.
Mould Control is the Pillar of the surface. On a long cure something will grow on the outside, and the curesmith decides what. The white bloom of the noble moulds, chiefly Penicillium nalgiovense, is wanted: it shields the meat from light and oxygen, steadies the drying and adds flavour. The patchy greens, blacks and fuzzy greys of wild moulds are not.
The distinction is a safety one, not merely cosmetic. Some wild moulds can produce mycotoxins in the meat itself. The established answer, developed in Germany in the 1970s, is to inoculate the surface with a selected noble strain that does not form mycotoxins, Penicillium nalgiovense, long known as Edelschimmel Kulmbach. It establishes first and suppresses the wild moulds, in the same competitive-exclusion way a starter culture works inside the sausage.
The practical controls are the noble inoculation, a humidity that favours it, and wiping or brushing away any wild growth that appears. A clean white coat is a sign the Pillar is being kept; a mess of colours is a sign it is not.
Temple element. Pillar, Mould Control