Gorgonzola is a blue cow's-milk cheese from northern Italy. The town of Gorgonzola, east of Milan, gave it a name. The protected zone is wider, across Lombardy and Piedmont.
Dolce is the younger, sweeter, creamier cheese. Piccante is older, firmer, and sharper. Dolce melts into a sauce. Piccante is closer to a cheese you eat on its own. Both are protected Gorgonzola.
History
The cheese is medieval in origin, a blue of the Po valley dairies, named for a town on the old roads east of Milan. Milk from a wide northern countryside could be turned into cheese and brought together to ripen. The modern protection keeps that northern zone, in Lombardy and Piedmont, rather than the single town.
Two styles became standard. Gorgonzola dolce is the sweet, soft one that many people now meet first, often spooned from a wedge. Gorgonzola piccante, also called naturale or stagionato, is the older, firmer blue. Both sit under the same protected name. A blue cheese from another country that borrows the word is not in that protection.
How it is made
Cow's milk is set and the curd is shaped into tall cylinders. Penicillium is part of the make, and the wheels are pierced so the blue can grow in veins. Dolce is made to stay moist and is ripened for a shorter time. Piccante loses more moisture and is held longer, so the paste becomes firmer and the flavor sharper.
The milk is cow's milk, which already separates Gorgonzola from Roquefort before age and salt do. The ripening is controlled in dairies of the protected zone, not in one famous cave. A sweet dolce and a sharp piccante can leave the same system. Read the word dolce or piccante. The word Gorgonzola alone does not tell you which texture you will get.
Taste
Dolce tastes sweet, salty, and milky, with a blue note that is present but soft. The paste can be spreadable, almost spoonable, with wide blue-green veins. Piccante tastes saltier, sharper, and more savory. The paste crumbles more, and the blue is a deeper part of each bite.
A good dolce smells of cream and mushrooms, not of ammonia. A good piccante smells cleaner and sharper, like a cellar. Brown paste, a wet rind that smells of cleaning fluid, or a bitter finish means the wedge is tired. Cold cheese tastes flatter and saltier. Let the wedge warm until the dolce softens or the piccante smells fully of cheese.
In the kitchen
Melt dolce into risotto, gnocchi, polenta, or a cream sauce. Use less than you would of a mild cheese, then taste. On a board, dolce likes pear, honey, or walnuts. Piccante is better in shards, next to bread and a firm fruit, or grated in a small amount over a hot dish. It will not give you the same smooth sauce.
Do not bake a large piece of dolce at a high heat and expect it to behave like mozzarella. It melts into a rich pool and can separate. Do not put piccante into a delicate salad that needed only a salty crumble, unless you want the sharper cheese to lead the plate. Roquefort is the substitute when a recipe wants sheep and high salt. A mild blue is the substitute when dolce is too soft for the board you have in mind.
Around the world
Protected Gorgonzola is made in the defined zone of northern Italy. It is one of the blues people outside Italy are most likely to find, both in a wedge at a cheese shop and in a tub of crumbles. Dolce in particular became an export cheese because it is approachable.
The name is protected. A blue labeled Gorgonzola should be the Italian cheese. Other blues that say Italian-style are a different purchase. In Italy it is both a table cheese and a cooking cheese, used across the north on polenta and in risotto. Elsewhere it is often the blue of a steakhouse sauce or a packaged salad. Both uses are fair if the style, dolce or piccante, matches the heat and the salt of the dish.