Salami Recipe & Drying Spreadsheet

[djrpowell]

Hi,

Here i have some information to share...

This is my first Italian Salami with pictures

http://www.animatedscience.co.uk/blog/?page_id=853

This is a drying calculator I worked out from the above Salami

http://www.animatedscience.co.uk/blog/?page_id=859

I have been quite scientific on this one to try and work it out and give some idea of what happens.

[grisell]

That looks like a real success! Good work!

How did the Camembert mould culture turn out? When I tried it, my salami tasted like Camembert. No such problem?

[djrpowell]

Thanks,

yes cheese mold turned out fine.

Also when you start looking at the one on the sausage Making site...

Mold 600
Meat culture for production of moulded dried sausages with a white/cream coloured appearance. Mold-600 is a single strain culture containing spores of Penicillium nalgiovense in a convenient freeze-dried form. P. nalgiovense is a fast growing, traditional white mold culture for controlling the surface flora.
Mold-600 is particularly recommended for the production of traditional sausages dried at low temperature and/or low humidity.
Mold-600 suppresses the growth of undesirable organisms such as indigenous molds, yeasts and bacteria. The culture has a positive effect on the drying process by preventing the emergence of a dry rim. Furthermore, the mold degrades lactic acid during maturation resulting in a pH increase and a less sourish flavor.
Note: Cultures must be stored in freezer and has a shelf life of 14 days unrefrigerated and 6 months frozen.

Also found this...

The presence of some fungi on a variety of food products, like cheeses or cured meat products, is beneficial for the ripening of the product and for the development of specific flavour features. The utilization of these fungi as starters, which are inoculated normally as asexual spores on the food products at the beginning of the ripening process, is becoming a usual procedure in the food industry. The starter culture also prevents undesirable fungi or bacteria from growing on the product. Penicillium nalgiovense is the most frequently used starter for cured and fermented meat products, but the fact that this fungus can secrete penicillin to the meat product makes it important to get strains unable to synthesize this antibiotic. In this work we report that P. nalgiovense strains impaired in penicillin production can be obtained by disruption of the pcbAB gene (the first gene of the penicillin biosynthetic pathway). When applied as starter on cecina (a salted, smoke-cured beef meat product from the region of León, Spain), the pcbAB-disrupted strain showed no differences with respect to the parental penicillin-producing strain in its ability to colonize the meat pieces and to control their normal mycoflora. Both strains exerted a similar control on the presence of bacteria in cecina. A similar proportion of penicillin-sensitive and penicillin-resistant bacteria were isolated from pieces inoculated with the penicillin-producing or the non-producing P. nalgiovense strains. The decrease of the bacterial population on the surface of cecina seems to be due to the higher competition for nutrients as a consequence of the inoculation and development of the P. nalgiovense mycelium and not due to the production of penicillin by this fungus. Penicillin production was less affected than growth in a solid medium with high NaCl concentrations; this suggests that the high salt concentration present in cecina is not a limiting factor for penicillin production by P. nalgiovense

So it is same as the cheese mold but different strain. I wonder if this strain is better when their is high NaCl so this is why used on salami.

However, mine did not taste cheesy. Also I did not prick skins this time so it is harder for penetration.

thanks for all the advice!

[Yannis]

Definitely a good looking salami, thanks for sharing !!