She grew the belly-button bacteria in a petri dish and then added it to milk. Sure enough, after a few hours, the milk curdled into cheese. Belly-button Brie, anyone? Now, for the most part ...

The submissions that came in from around the world looked more like paintings than a collection of bacteria in petri dishes. One even resembles Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting.

They cultivated that bacteria and yeast in petri dishes and eventually combined them with milk to create farmhouse cheddar and whey cream cheese. Because the end products—actual hunks of cheese ...

The submissions that came in from around the world looked more like paintings than a collection of bacteria in petri dishes. One even resembles Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” painting.