<<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.
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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!!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I avoid blue cheese and gorgonzola.  I ask for feta cheese to be 
substituted in restaurants.
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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.
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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.
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Apologies for the big printing. I hope it didn't present any problems...

Continued................. 

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