Dry salting
Salting cheese with dry salt, either rubbed on the surface or mixed into milled curd.
Also: salting by hand, rubbing, salage à sec
Dry salting is the alternative to brining. For many soft and mountain cheeses, coarse salt is rubbed or sprinkled over the surface of the young cheese by hand, sometimes daily for a week or more, as with Roquefort, Camembert and many tommes. For English territorial cheeses such as cheddar, Cheshire and Lancashire, salt is mixed into the milled curd before it is pressed, which spreads it evenly through the cheese at once. Salt draws out whey, slows unwanted bacteria, helps form a rind and seasons the cheese. The method decides where the salt sits: rubbed salt moves slowly inward, while mixed-in salt is even from the start.