The crisis that puts Brie cheese in danger is the looming extinction of the specific mold used to make it. Penicillium camemberti is a lab-domesticated fungi strain and has been cloned for ...

In 1897, biochemists isolated Penicillium camemberti, a species of white mold that makes brie and Camembert into the cheeses they are. The fungi alters the originally orange, gray and green ...

As Brie ripens, it forms a “bloomy rind,” which refers to the naturally-occurring mold layer that blooms on the outside of the cheese.

Soft cheese can also be frozen but might not fare as well. If you spot mold on a hard cheese, you can safely cut it away as long as you remove at least 1 inch around and below the edge of the mold.

That being said, Camembert and brie cheeses aren’t gone for good just yet. To make the cheeses, producers could simply inoculate cow’s milk with other Penicillium biforme molds, which are ...

Will brie and Camembert cheeses go extinct? Here’s what scientists say. By María Luisa Paúl The Washington Post,Updated March 9, 2024, 1:53 p.m.

As Brie ripens, it forms a “bloomy rind,” which refers to the naturally-occurring mold layer that blooms on the outside of the cheese.