<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>> To the best of my knowledge, the blue veins you see in Blue Cheese are often the result of bacteria/cultures introduced into the cheese during the making of it -- on gluten media -- often breadcrumbs. This , supposedly , is not the case in the making of gorgonzola. Who knows. *********************************************** As I understand it, the blue in those cheeses depends upon whether the mold used is bread or not. I'm not sure how it gets into the cheese or who one would ask, so I sadly avoid them!! *********************************************** It's funny you should ask because I was getting ready to post about thie subject of Gorgonzola Cheese today. The REAL truth, everyone, is that we still have to READ the ingredients - case by case. I searched on the GF sites and got the impression that gorgonzola was GF. I bought gorgonzola cheese two days ago and did not read the ingredients...a rare event. Made an apple, walnut and gorgonzola cheese salad. Three hours later the bad news arrived and I spent the rest of the night in the small room eating Immodium. Next day I actually READ the ingredients , and there for all the world to see, in the ingredients list, was WHEAT. Another lesson reinforced to pass along to my dearly respected friends on the listserve. ********************************************* I just recently did some research on blue cheese for a gf cooking class we are doing in Nashville. Here's what I came up with: I spoke with Clemson Blue Cheese (did you know it was made at Clemson University?), and the cheesemaker gave me the phone number from the company in Wisconsin that they purchase their mold from, Chris Hanson. The rep there said they do start their mold from wheat bread and there is an allergy indication on their product concerning wheat. Here's what I found out about blue cheese from Shelley Case, R.D. a gluten free diet book author and dietitian: "All the research we did for the CCA pocket dictionary of ingredients revealed that all blue cheese is ok. Most is made from a bacterial culture and not started on bread mould. Even when it is the amount of bread mould is very small in relation to the huge vat of cheese that the final product would not undetected levels of gluten. So blue cheese is not a problem." I contacted Maytag, and they said they start their mold on wheat bread, but according to Shelley Case, this is not a problem. However,the following blue cheese's ARE gluten free: St. Clements from Bornholm's Dairy Rosenborg Les Fromages D'Ann Marie Smoked Shropshire Cabot King's Choice Green Island I could not access the website for Point Reyes. *************************************************** I have been told it is the source of the culture. The "molds" use to be grown on wheat bread.....not many are today. Guess you have to check the source from the individual company. **************************************************** I've eaten both bleu and stilton in the US and France without issue. I think it's more common for them to contain gluten in the US probably so I am more careful here. **************************************************** I avoid blue cheese and gorgonzola. I ask for feta cheese to be substituted in restaurants. **************************************************** The idea that blue cheese contains bread is, I think, traceable to the following from the website straightdope.com: .... Roquefort cheese was originally made: The farmers would collect the milk, curdle it with rennet, then scoop the curds by hand into molds. A powder made from grating moldy bread was sprinkled into the curds . . . The bread was stored in the same damp caves that aged the cheese, and in a few weeks it turned blue and was ground to dust for cheese making. However: In modern blue cheese production, the mold comes from a highly controlled "starter" batch. For home made blue cheese, the mold is taken from the previous batch of cheese. This mold is introduced into the ripening cheese by poking long skewers through the mixture, which also allows air introduced to assist in the mold growth. However, to maintain a quality product with a consistent look and feel, some modern production methods mix the mold with the curds before they're pressed, so no skewering is involved. The question, therefore, is: does the mold contain gluten? To be honest, I have no idea, but it seems reasonable to think that if it does, the amount is very very small indeed. When I was first diagnosed (biopsy, more than 10 years ago) conventional wisdom in the Celiac community was that we should avoid blue cheese. I later learned that crumbled, packaged blue cheese sometimes contains wheat starch, used as a de-clumping ingredient. I have not checked lately and don't know for sure, but for me this (perhaps outdated) fact was one of many factors that evolved into my convenient if imprecise and unscientific rule of thumb: inexpensive foods are more likely to have gluten than pricier ones -- i.e., the good canned Italian tomatoes are fine, but Hunt's are suspect. As I am a total cheese addict, my rule of thumb led to my cautiously trying some good blue cheese. No symptoms. Some more good blue cheese. Still, no symptoms. Granted, lack of symptoms is no guarantee of gluten-free, but my antibody tests have been consistently clean over the years. Also, I am among those who reacts symptomatically to very small amounts of gluten. I am very very careful about adhering to a gluten-free diet; not even tempted to stray. This note may be a lot longer than it is helpful, because I don't have a definitive, scientifically defensible answer to your question. But I think the idea that blue cheese has gluten is like the scientifically unsupportable idea that distilled (non-malt) vinegar contains gluten: artifacts of a time in which less was known and less attention was paid to Celiac and what really constitutes a gluten-free diet. Soi: I avoid packaged, supermarket blue cheese, but real Stilton and etc. from a cheese store? I eat it all the time, with no problem. *********************************************** This was the most interesting thing I could find...Turns out it's from our local paper... Looks like you'll probably have more questions than answers. Bev in Milwaukee <http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=445330>http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=445330 Blue cheese is created by the same group of mold spores that produce penicillin, Mellgren writes. "The ones most frequently used (to make blue-veined cheeses) are Pinicillium glaucum or Penicillium roqueforti, the latter named for the famous French Roquefort from which the strain was isolated," Mellgren writes. Bread acts as a host for this cheese mold, but it is not the same grayish mold found in bread that is spoiling, Pehl said. The mold doesn't actually begin to form veins in cheese until the cheese has aged roughly 25 days. Typically, blue mold spores are poured into the vat as the cheese is being made. The fresh cheese then is pierced with long needles to create passageways for the mold to spread as it interacts with the air during aging. ************************************************** Apologies for the big printing. I hope it didn't present any problems... Continued................. *Support summarization of posts, reply to the SENDER not the CELIAC List* Archives are at: Http://Listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?LIST=CELIAC