Mozzarella hint

[cheeseslovesu]

After trying so many recipes and making an OK mozzarella I felt it was time to make a soft delicate cow mozzarella that is beyond delicious.
Try a bigger cut and stirring a little less. A pH meter does make a great mozzarella and only stretch at 5.0 - 5.2. The batch in this photo actually went down past 5.0 and it just oozed out of my hands into the iced water.
I made buffalo milk mozz and jersey milk mozz today, started at 11am and finished at 6pm.

[Stinky]

Could we get a step-by-step?

[pastpawn]

Perfect timing.  I was thinking about tackling mozz again this weekend.  I've had a couple of successes and just as many ultra failures. 

Why is mozz always described as a easy cheese?  Friggin tough.  This will be the first one I've made with a pH meter in hand, so that might help. 

[cheeseslovesu]

It needs a few attempts Andrew and once you have the right recipe then stick to it. The pH meter makes such a difference, you can follow the progress and see when steps need to be taken. I am posting the recipe up now.
Have iced water on hand and plenty of boiling water at the end so when you add the curds it doesn't drop in temp too much. I put my curds back in the bain marie/pot and sit it on a low heat to get the water back to 80- 90C ready to stretch the whole lot together.

[awakephd]

Thanks, Debra - AC4U. This recipe confirms some of my suspicions about how I have needed to modify other recipes, especially with respect to curd size.

One minor suggestion -- you might consider posting this as a .pdf document rather than a Word .docx. The advantage of the latter is being able to add notes (e.g., converting between metric and imperial measurements for us backward folks!); however, Word documents are a favorite target for nasty computer viruses.

If you would like to convert to .pdf and don't have the means handy, I'll be happy to do it for you and re-post. If you'd like me to keep my nose out of other people's business, I will do that as well!

Andy

[cheeseslovesu]

Andy, I would love you to pdf me. consider yourself my PA!

I have been teaching High School Agriculture teachers today and am about to make a batch of haloumi and ricotta. Should be finished by midnight.

My next adventure is cloth bound cheddar. Stay tuned.

thanks for the cheese.

[awakephd]

Here you go -- a .pdf of the file, plus a second .pdf with imperial conversions added

[pastpawn]

Meh. 

What I really mean is $&*(^$% mozzarella.  I attempted again Saturday, miserable failure.  I want by the Word doc above as much as possible (thanks Deb) but my curds were very loose and I couldn't keep them from breaking up while stirring.  I plunged forward anyway, my brow sweaty knowing how this would probably end. 

In the end, after cooking the curds numerous times and attempting to get them to stretch, I ended up with the same ricotta looking mess I've had many times before.

The starter never brought the pH down the way it needed to be.  I never get below 6.0.  I used MA4002 and let it go a while.  I will give this another try soon with the same milk, but I'm just adding citric acid until I get the pH I want before I add the rennet. 

Agh!

[pastpawn]

BTW Debra, I'm working through Gavin's Little Green Cheese podcasts and quite coincidentally you're on at this very moment.   Good story so far!

[cheeseslovesu]

Thanks for the pdf Andy. x

Andrew, I have been using a thermophilic starter culture for mozz. There is one specifically designed for mozz TM81 or my old culture TCC-20 is good too. Always make a premix culture with ultra heat treated milk the day before. 150ml per 10 litres milk. I heat the milk to 90C then cool to about 35C then add some starter and maintain the 35C heat until set approx. 6 - 10 hours. When you add the set premix it really only takes 30 mins for the pH to drop.
Next issue could be the milk. There are some brands that just don't work. If it has been frozen it wont work. Try another milk source. I have made mozz with homogenised milk but it is a very reliable source of milk. I can see you are in florida, do you have access to raw milk fresh from the cow??

ps, I do love an interview... they never have to ask me questions they just have to keep me on track!

[pastpawn]

Thanks for the pdf Andy. x

Andrew, I have been using a thermophilic starter culture for mozz. There is one specifically designed for mozz TM81 or my old culture TCC-20 is good too. Always make a premix culture with ultra heat treated milk the day before. 150ml per 10 litres milk. I heat the milk to 90C then cool to about 35C then add some starter and maintain the 35C heat until set approx. 6 - 10 hours. When you add the set premix it really only takes 30 mins for the pH to drop.
Next issue could be the milk. There are some brands that just don't work. If it has been frozen it wont work. Try another milk source. I have made mozz with homogenised milk but it is a very reliable source of milk. I can see you are in florida, do you have access to raw milk fresh from the cow??

ps, I do love an interview... they never have to ask me questions they just have to keep me on track!

I've got a raw milk source.  Just found it this wkend.  I've got a bit of travel coming up, then I'm going to try raw milk.  I can also buy it non-homogenized (and "gently" pasteurized, whatever that means),  but I'm trying to get away from that stuff since it's relatively expensive and I'm not certain yet that it's necessary. 

I did rush the accidification culture.  I didn't read your doc until just before I was getting started and as I'm sure you know, the windows of time within which you can make cheese come and go quickly.  So I just pitched the un-hydrated culture into the milk and hoped for the best.  You can see how that turned out. 

I do wonder if I should be adding CaCl to the milk.  I heard someone recently go into detail on why CaCl is counter-productive when making mozz.  However, given the very loose curds I had, perhaps CaCl is a good idea. 

You were wonderful on Gavin's show.  Cheers!

[cheeseslovesu]

You will love the raw milk and it will make all the difference. I don't approve of "bath milk" that is sold in Australia with a 'not fit for human consumption' sticker on it as it is usually bottled in a non hygienic manner. I wouldn't drink it and I wouldn't make cheese out of it. Fresh raw milk is a different matter. I get my jersey milk from a dairy about 25 mins drive from me and I am making cheese out of it as soon as I get home.
Pasteurisation commercially usually is 72C for 15 seconds. When I had a cheese factory we pasteurised at 63C held milk at that temp for 30 mins then reduced the temp to the cheese temp we were making. That might explain the gentle pasteurisation process.
There is a brand of organic pasteurised only milk available here that does not make good cheese. I am not sure what they do to it, maybe it is ultra heat treated but once you have a fail you try other milk and stick to the one that works.
Once you get your head into mozzarella you can think ahead and make the starter, have some iced water ready and fingers crossed you will make some beautiful cheese.

[KenK2]

Hello!

I am really really sorry for the Newbie question, however where can I get some of the starter culture you mention?  TM81 or TCC-20? 

I am quite interested in your process of making mozzarella and this looks better than all of the other How To Guides.  I have access to some really great Milk so I am hoping this Mozz is a good one.. 

Thank you so much for the help!

Ken

Thanks for the pdf Andy. x

Andrew, I have been using a thermophilic starter culture for mozz. There is one specifically designed for mozz TM81 or my old culture TCC-20 is good too. Always make a premix culture with ultra heat treated milk the day before. 150ml per 10 litres milk. I heat the milk to 90C then cool to about 35C then add some starter and maintain the 35C heat until set approx. 6 - 10 hours. When you add the set premix it really only takes 30 mins for the pH to drop.
Next issue could be the milk. There are some brands that just don't work. If it has been frozen it wont work. Try another milk source. I have made mozz with homogenised milk but it is a very reliable source of milk. I can see you are in florida, do you have access to raw milk fresh from the cow??

ps, I do love an interview... they never have to ask me questions they just have to keep me on track!

[cheeseslovesu]

Hi Ken,

I am not sure where you buy cultures from in USA. I just looked at the cheesemaking web site and their cheese cultures don't have names so that's a bit restrictive.
Hopefully someone will jump in and give you some advise.

debbie

[awakephd]

Ken,

I get my cultures from ArtisanGeek (www.artisangeek.com), and they carry TM81. There are also a number of other on-line sources for cultures (e.g., www.cheesemaking.com); they will carry some of the same, and sometimes some slightly different selections.

Keep in mind that thermophilic culture(s) generally consist of one primary culture, ST (Streptococcus Thermophilus) plus, optionally, some additional flavor/aroma cultures (LH, Lactobacillus Helveticus; LDL, Lactobacillus delbrueckii lactis; LDB, Lactobacillus delbrueckii bulgaricus). Several commercial suppliers blend these in various ways, though they don't tell you what the proportions are; the following are all available from ArtisanGeek:

ST + LDB: Abiasa Thermo B or Danisco Choozit TM81

ST + LH: Abiasa Thermo C

ST + LH + LDB: Danisco Choozit SuCasu

You can also get at least some of the individual cultures and make your own mix:

ST only: Danisco Choozit TA50 or TA60 series (the numbers range from 50-56 or 60-62; each number within the series represents a slight variation that commercial producers can rotate among to prevent a build-up of phage. For the home cheesemaker, which specific one you get doesn't matter. Note that TA60 is the "standard" ST culture, while TA50 is a much slower acidifier)

LH + LDL: Danisco Choozit LH100

Based on my limited experience, for making Mozarella I would say that you won't notice a great deal of difference between any of the thermo blends. (On the other hand, if you want to punch up the flavor noticeably, add some lipase!) But note that many others here are far more experienced, so they may be able to attest to a significant difference between using one of these versus another ...