I’ve taken about a 2 year break from making cheese, but recently it has come back into my hobby rotation. The firm curd was made on November 8 and the softer curd was made and the cheese put together on November 9. This was adapted from Jim Wallace’s recipe on the cheesemaking dot com website.
I was having trouble with my pH meter, so take any pH readings here with a grain of salt.
Ingredients for each day2 gal. Cream top Pasteurized milk
¼ tsp. Flora Danica (Used ½ tsp. second day).
½ tsp CaCl diluted with R/O water
1/32 tsp. P. roqueforti rehydrated in milk (Day 1 firm curd only)
Calf Rennet
Day 1Milk brought to 87° F and CaCl Added. pH 6.64
Add P. roqueforti and Flora Danica. pH measured 6.47 at 30 minutes.
Add ½ tsp. (50 drops) Calf Rennet.
Floc time was 9 minutes (too fast). Cut curd at 36 minutes.
After rough cut with a knife, rested 10 minutes and stirred with a whisk until curds uniform.
Stirred for a little over 1 hour, watching the pH go up. (6.53 at ½ hour, 6.67 at 1 hour). Decided that my meter was toast and drained the curds in a colander. Hung to drain overnight. Out of curiosity, I monitored pH from the whey, and got readings of 6.59 at 1-1/2 hours, 6.53 at 2-1/2 hours, 6.5 at 5 hours, 6.43 at 6 hours, 6.35 at 8 hours, and a final pH of 4.77 the next morning.
Day 2Milk brought to 87° F and CaCl Added. pH 6.60
pH 6.6 at 30 minutes, 6.47 at 1 hour, 6.36 at 1:15
Added 40 drops rennet diluted in R/O water. Floc time still 9 minutes. (Different brand milk, lower pH?) Cut at 36 minutes and rested 10 before stirring with whisk. After curds uniform, intermittently stirred with a spoon. Total time from cut until pH 5.9 was about 3 hours. Drained whey to just above curd level.
Milled firm curd to approximately thumbnail size.
Started filling mold with approximately 1/3 of the softer curd on the bottom. The next 1/3 of the soft curd surrounded all of the firm curd. The last 1/3 of the soft curd went on top. I had to press down gently to get everything into the mould.
After the mould was filled, flipped it about every half hour until bedtime. Continued flipping the next day, tapering off to every hour or 2.
This cheese is dry salted over 3 days, with total salt equal to 4% of the initial cheese weight. 50% of the salt is used on day 4. 30% of the salt is used on day 5, 20% of the salt is used on day 6. Each day’s salting was divided into morning and evening doses.
So, with a cheese weight of 2150 Grams, here is the salt schedule:
Day Side 1 (Morning) Side 2 (Evening) 4 25% of total or 22 grams 25% of total or 22 grams 5 15% of total, or 13 grams 15% of total, or 13 grams 6 10% of total, or 8 grams 10% of total, or 8 grams |
Day 7 put cheese in a box and into the “cave” at 54° F. Humidity was around 80 to 95%, depending on which hygrometer I chose to believe on any given day. There was some condensation in the box, so I’ll go with somewhere in the 90s. Flipped every day or 2. At day 11 there was a small amount of blue on the outside.
Day 16 perforated top and sides with a skewer.
Day 19 perforated bottom. Day 22 re-perforated top. Day 25 re-perforated bottom.
Pics to follow…