Port Salut has always been among my favorites of the semi-hard cheeses. I think it is also because of the Brevbacterium which gives it the orange-red rind color and the fact that it is not only rindwashed but also curd washed and thus a "sweet" cheese.
I decided to make 2 wheels yesterday ...did follow instructions from Book "200 recipes". i appr. doubled the recipe( with an xtra ltr of milk) and used Flora Danica as Mesophilic Starter the recipe looks like this:
25 ltr Milk
1tsp Flora Danica ( named as FD below)
1/4 tsp Brevibacterium Linens Powder (C10) ( named as B.Linens below)
1,5 tsp Calcium chloride ( diluted in 0,5 cup cool unchlorinated Water)
1,5 tsp Liquid Animal Rennet (diluted in 0,5 cup cool unchlorinated Water)
The Brine i still had from the recently made jarlsberg ( it was made by diluting 1 part salt wit 5 parts of water )
Those who read my previous cheesmakings will notice that i finally got myself a 30ltr Stainless Steel Pot and my PH Meter which went back and forth another time is finally at work too :-)
I started by heating the milkslowly to 90F/32C - PH 6.7
When temperature was reached i sprinkled FD & B.Linens to re-hydrate on top of the Milk for 5 min
I then stirred and let ripen for 60 minutes. PH 6.6
Then comes diluted Calcium Chrloride and stir
Followed by the diluted Rennet and stir again with an up/down movement
over the Pot and let stand undisturbed for 30 minutes or until a clean break is achieved...it took 40 minutes on mine
Clean break was achieved and i cut the curds now into small 1,5 cm cubes and let them stand for about 5 min before i carefully start stirring tem...actually not really much stirrin g but better described to keep them in motion .
As i kept moving the curds more and more whey will be released from the curds. one third of the Whey need to be emoved and replaced by equal amount of warm water until a temperature of 33C/92F was reached...and stir for 10 min the let the curds settle
you do the same again remove 1/3 whey and replace it with equal amount of warm water until you reached now 37C/98F and stir 10 min ...than let it settle and remove as much as possible whey now
Next to fill the Cheesmold lined with cheesecloth with the curds:
After i covered the cheesmold with the follower and did first a light pre-pressing and then some light pressing ...cheesepress would be nice to have but i opted out for an "alternative" way :-)
After 30 min light pressing it was time to re-dress the cheese and apply medium pressing...
Didn't make an actual picture of the medium pressing this time but it looked pretty similar to this
After 10hours pressing i took the cheese out from the mold and removed the cheesecloth. , here the 2 Cheeses...PH 5.4
Next step was the Brine Bath...which took 8 hours ( turning them over after 4 hours and sprinkling salt on the side which is on surface)
After the 8 hours Brining they were removed from the Brine and are drying on the rack
This is as much as i can tell now as i wait for them to dry on the Rack ( will change to use a finer wirerack to have better aircirculation for drying off}
will post back later on progress..
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