The life of this cheese supposedly began when centuries ago a farmer, trying to copy Roquefort, pierced the cheese with the mold from a stale rye bread. Interesting? Maybe not, but this blue is a happy accident that has a moist, creamy paste and is packed with weepy pockets of blue-green Penicillium glaucum mold. Today the cows whose milk becomes Bleu d'Auvergne still graze on the rich, mountain pastures in this area of France where not much has changed since that lucky day when the strange farmer, in a fit of rage that he had no fresh rye bread with which to make his Ruben sandwich, stabbed his curd with the moldy loaf.

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