I've found that if you want to make a decent cheese you don't want to do too many things at once. I broke my rule yesterday but it looks like things turned out good.
Here's the short summary because details for 4 cheeses would be painful for everyone to read:
- Started with 4 gal. low-temperature pasteurized, non-homogenized whole cow's milk plus 16 oz. light cream previously reserved.
- Decanted another 8 oz. or so cream from one gallon of the new milk; added to the reserved cream and cultured with a Cream Frache DVI.
- Decanted about 2 qts. from the same gallon and cultured with a Y4 yogurt culture.
- Used the remaining 3.5 or so gallons to make a Tomme-style cheese (Gianiclas Caldwell's recipe and my very first "mother cultured" cheese!!)
- Used the whey (+ 10% whole milk) to make the ricotta.
So I basically made 4 (cheeses and/or cultured dairy products) in one day
, and would have to say that I was very pleased with the results so far.
Here are the yields from 4 gal. (15.1 L) whole milk (plus about a quart of extra milk added to whey):Y4 yogurt (after draining overnight): 1.75 lbs (.8 kg)
Tomme (after brining): 4.0 lbs (1.8 kg)
marscopone: .7 lbs (.3 kg)
whey ricotta: 1.3 lbs (.6 kg)
I sampled everything but the "big cheese" and all was good. I'm especially pleased with the whey ricotta yield because I've not had good yields before.
Made Manicotti (using homemade shells) with the ricotta tonight which turned out excellent, and plan to use the left over shells with some of the marscopone over fresh South Carolina peaches and just-picked blueberries tomorrow morning
.