Harvesting commercial mold

[Seadog92]

I'm making my first Salami, and had a question about mold. I read an article about harvesting mold from commercial salami. I did as it instructed, used distilled water, added a bit of sugar, and put in a postage stamp size mold casing from a good dry salami. After a few hours, I brushed this liquid onto the salami during the fermentation stage. That was a week ago. They've been in the curing chamber at 90% humidity, 55-58 degrees for 6 days, and as of today, there's no mold growth.

Should I just let it go, or should I take a fresh piece of the commercial salami casing and rub it on all the salamis in the curing chamber..OR, try the process all over again with the distilled water and sugar?

[redzed]

I think the problem may have been in the size of that postage stamp. For my several last batches of salami I used the mould from the skins of previous batches, and have had success every time. I place a large piece or three or four smaller pieces (let's say 15 or 20 postage stamps) into a clean glass, add distilled water and a tiny pinch of dextrose stir and after 30 minutes spray my salami. I like to do this after fermentation and after I bathe the salami in a warm salt water solution. I have found that this keeps other moulds from growing and it reduces yeast formations as well. See my earlier post about backslopping mould here:
http://wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.php?t=7194

Having said that, the mould will activate a lot quicker if you innoculate the salami when you start fermentation when the humidity and temperature is higher.

So I would try again, but use a larger pice of mouldy casing. If it is a genuine natural mould on your commercial salami, there is no reason why it should not work. And the reason I mention "genuine" is that many of the big packers roll their salami in rice flour to simulate that mouldy look. So we have to be careful.

Let us know about progress.