Cheese: Heating the Curd

At this point, some cheeses, including emmental, gruyère, grana, and other compact, even-textured types, are scalded at temperatures up to 57°C (134°F)—not quite hot enough to coagulate the protein (60°C/140°F). For different reasons, much higher temperatures are used in whey cheeses and schabziger, where coagulation is necessary. These cheeses are called ‘cooked’ or ‘semi-cooked’, depending on the degree of heating. The effect is to shrink the grains and consolidate the texture. Despite the heat, at least some of the bacteria survive to develop flavour in the finished cheese.