Larry,
I decided to try my hand at a Gorgonzola Picante this weekend, and in the process noticed a couple of interesting differences / questions -- when I checked Jim Wallace's recipe on www.cheesemaking.com, I noticed that he called for thermo (yoghurt) rather than meso -- but all other recipes used meso, including your use of FD. I decided to use a 4:2:1 combination of MA011, MD088, and TA061 -- essentially something like FD + a dash of thermo. We'll see how it comes out ...
I also noticed that you used 1/3 of the first day's curd on bottom and top, and 1/3 on the sides. For my make, it worked better to use 1/4 on bottom and top, and 1/2 on sides -- may be just a difference in the shape of my mold, which was a bit more squat than I would have liked. (It looks like the cheese will be about 2/3 as tall as it is wide.)
In any case, I hope my results will be half as good as yours!
My use of Flora Danica stems back to when I only had one culture.
. Well, I had the small packets from NEC, but opted to go with something that had a name. It worked, so I kept on using it. One thing I like about it is that it supposedly creates a little more open structure because of gas production. I don't really know if it helps, but it doesn't seem to have hurt.
As far as the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 distribution, I didn't weigh or measure it, I just SWAGd it.
I'm looking forward to seeing yours.
Just getting caught back up on the forum. I went to Ohio for my brother's 60th.
Larry
