Cheesemakers!

[BernardSmith]

Hi Sweetiepie. Always interested in novel cheese processes and recipes. Would you share your non stretch mozz recipe? (just started a Caerphilly cheese yesterday and was planning to make a mozz cheese this evening - but not the 30 minute variety that acidifies the milk with lemon juice or some other acid. I wanted to culture the milk with kefir so this may take until tomorrow to hit a pH of 5.2

 

[Sweetiepie]

Easy Peasy Pizza cheese

4 gallons raw cow's milk
1 1/2 cups yogurt
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/8 tsp powdered calf rennet (or follow the directions for what ever rennet you have)
3/8 cup kosher salt


In a double boiler, warm milk to 90*F. Whisk yogurt with buttermilk and enough warmed milk to make it pourable, then whisk into kettle of milk.

Turn off heat and cover. Maintain temp while acidifying milk for 1 hour. Dissolve rennet in 1/4 cup cool water. Gently but thoroughly stir rennet into milk for about 20-30 seconds. Use skimmer to stop the motion of the milk. Check in about 45 minutes for clean break and, if achieved, cut curd into 3/4 inch cubes.

Let curds heal for ten minutes - allow to rest without stirring. Use a skimmer to gently lift curds and cut any that are large into smaller pieces. Turn heat to medium-low and allow to come to 105* F, about one hour. Occasionally stir gently if you wish, but I did not, as I did chores during this time.

Ladle curds into a cloth-lined colander. After draining for an hour or so, toss with salt and continue to drain overnight or 6- 8 hours. I then refrigerate for a day and then shred in a food processor and freeze but you can shape it how ever you want.

 

[BernardSmith]

ah... Thanks. But is this a meltable cheese - a pasta filata? Does it melt the same way that mozzarella melts? I would have thought the relatively low temperature at which it is "cooked" (105 F rather than 150- 180F) means that it would tend to crumble rather than slice but perhaps there is enough whey still in the curds (since there is no pressing, only draining, and stirring the curds is "occasional" and not continuous (the stirring expels the whey from the curds)..

 

[Sweetiepie]

It melts like other home made stretched mozzarella, but not as well as store bought. I don't usually slice my mozzarella so I am not sure but it holds a shape, not sure if it would crumble when a knife goes across it. I shred it because it is easier for me to cook with that way.

 

[BernardSmith]

OK... I am going to make a batch of this tonight. I was planning on a slow mozzarella but this seems much faster while still making use of the complexities of flavor offered by cultures rather than acidity, and if it works ... it works. Thanks, Sweetiepie.

Wait.. that is a fair amount of salt, isn't it? 1 C of salt = 16 T so 3/8 = 6T and if I use 1 gallon of milk that is about 1.5 T of salt...

 

[BernardSmith]

One question, though. It is not clear whether the rise in temperature from 90 - 105F takes an hour or whether it takes say, 30 minutes and you hold the temperature at 105 for the hour. Do you have a sense of this? Thanks.

 

[Sweetiepie]

That is the amount of salt the recipe calls for but if you are going to eat it fresh or freeze it, you could add less. I have always understood her recipe to be, warm gradually to 105 taking an hour but I have gotten new stoves at one point and it warmed sooner and I held it there and it worked fine.

I hope it works well for you. I probably should of told you before, I am not much of a cheese connoisseur, more of a mom and if she finds something her family likes she sticks with it kind of person. As kids get older, that gets rarer.

 

[BernardSmith]

Made some last night and it is now in my refrigerator in a ball. Will try slicing this tonight and perhaps make a pizza to test it. By the way, the secret of the slow rise in temperature is not to heat the curds. What you do is use a double boiler and you heat the water in the boiler to about 10 degrees hotter than the temperature you are aiming for (in this case 105F, so you heat the water to 115F and then you place the kettle with the curds (in this case at 90 F) in the pot with the hot water and the heat will slowly raise the temperature of the curds to 105F. For what it's worth, in my opinion, you never really want to heat the milk or the curds directly as the bottom of the pot will be far hotter than the top - even if you stir the milk like a banshee and you can find that the milk at the bottom is cooked and so won't contribute anything to the cheese.
The importance of the slow rise in temperature is, I think, to prevent the curds from too quickly being sealed and so preventing more of the whey to be expelled. In the end I allowed the temperature to rise in 30 minutes and held it for another 60 before draining off the whey. I also tweaked your recipe: added 1 t of calcium chloride (dissolved in 1/4 C of distilled water) because I was using pasteurized milk. Pasteurization (not UHT! ) damages or destroys some of the protein chains and the Ca Cl neutralizes this problem

 

[JohnT]

Any chance at seeing some pictures?

 

[Sweetiepie]

Wonderful! I have my own milk cow so I am glad you know how to fix the pasteurization. Also the yogurt and buttermilk is made fresh from the cow and not store bought, so I am unsure if that matters.

I do use a 5 gallon stainless steel double boiler and love it. It keeps a constant temperature with out adding more heat.

I have not taken any pictures of my cheese making and currently my milk cow is dried off for calving this spring. But when I start again, I can.