Alpine Cheese Recipe - by Reg

[Colaly]

I am planning to do my recently pressed manchego in an olive oil bath. Do you have trouble with your oil solidifying in the cool temperature of the cave? I was thinking of mixing some vegetable oil with the olive oil to help keep it liquid, or maybe I just need to by higher quality olive oil?

[Tea]

The person that originally posted the oil aging idea, said that he used a vegetable oil.  He said that olive was too expensive to use on a large scale.  I used olive oil simply because I had a lot of that on hand.

I can't get my cave that cold, so I didn't have problems with gelling, but aparently olive will gell.

HTH

[linuxboy]

Actually, a higher-quality olive oil (cold pressed, EV) should congeal at a higher temp than one that has been heat treated and filtered to stabilize. However, EV or similar olive oil will not go rancid if you rub the cheese's rind with it. Most other veg oil will go rancid. Of course, rancidity is a different story with cheese stored in sealed oil because of low oxygen contact.

[Tea]

I made a provolone and was trying to air age it, but I accidently cross contaminated with white mould.  Reg suggested that I oil the rind and see what happened.  I used olive again, and the resulting cheese was wonderful.  I oiled the rind about every 2-4 weeks.

[Frumunda]

Your curds in the pot look beautiful. Anyway, the problem I see with most presses is that they are not nearly accurate enough, meaning you have no idea what pressures you actuall have. Second most cheese videos I see they all mill the curds with a machine that breaks them up into uniform pieces, this in turn will create a uniform defect free cheese. I'm working on that same problem at the moment.

I've never made a cheese like this before,or any that require pressing yet,and am by no means an expert,but when you load the press,maybe it might not have all the defects if you put the curds in the press a little at the time instead of all at once,and pack them down a bit with your fist before adding more until all the curds are packed into the press and then press it.Maybe that might help?