Hi all,
The cheeese-making bug has bitten!
About two months ago I setup my very own Kindergaten class for making "baby-step" cheeses. My Ricottas were soon followed by Ricotta Salatas and Mozzerellas. The Ricottas and Mozzerellas were fine but the Ricotta Salata batches were definitely far too salty. Lesson learnt!
Having completed my apprenticeship (or so I belived at the time) about a month ago, I then proceeded with batches of Liecester, Derby and Colby in quick succession . I have about 1kg (2 lbs) of each doing their thing, duly waxed and labelled, in the vegetable drawers at the bottom of the fridge. And now comes the big wait. Not knowing how they will turn out is, for me, part of the mystique of this facinating new hobby.
Trust a beginner to keep things nice and simple, my current batch is a batch of Brie! Somewhere along the road I confused issues a bit and I added Ash to the salt in a 1:10 ratio. The outside does not quite look like the pale white/cream Brie that I am used to, but what the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The four rounds are in their third day of air-drying and were atomised yesterday with P.Candidum mold after being previously salted. I now waiting in eager expectation for the mold spores to appear.
Cheers for now
Paddy