DANBO'S CHEDDAR WITH PORT - Make notes
Inspired by a recipe in the book "200 Easy Cheese Recipes" (
http://www.amazon.com/200-Easy-Homemade-Cheese-Recipes/dp/0778804658). Consider buying this book - there is a lot of exciting recipes! I have tried to describe the way I did it as precise as possible but there might be errors.
Ingredients:
- 24 liters of Demeter-quality milk. Fat content 4,03%. Not homogenized. Pasteurized
- 3,75 ml (1,35 g) Choozit MA4001 culture
- 3,4 ml Calcium Chloride 50%
- 7 ml Bioren Liquid Rennet Extract (1:15.000)
- 55 ml sea salt
- 0,5 g Lysozyme (to prevent late blowing - optional)
- 0,5 liter Dark Red Portwine
Process:
- Kitchen and equipment cleaned and santized with StarSan (30 ml to 20 liters of Water)
- Lysozyme (dilluted in a glass of water) added to milk
- Milk slowly heated to 31C
- Culture springled over milk. Left to rehydrate 5 minutes before stirring for 3 minutes
- Left to ripen for 40 minutes
- Calcium Chloride (dilluted in a glass of Water) is added. Wait 5 minutes after stirring
- Rennet (dilluted in a glass of Water) is added. Stirred for 2 minutes
- Using "spinning bowl"-method to calculate time to cut:
Floc.time: 19,5 mins
Floc. factor: 3
Time to cut: 59 min
- Curds cut into 1,5 cm cubes 59 minutes after adding rennet
- Curds rest for 5 minutes
- Temperature increased to 39C over 45 minutes (around 1C every 6 minutes) while stirring slowly
- Maintain 32C and stir for additional 35 minutes
- Drain all the whey from the curds
- Return the curds to the vat and leave them for 10 minutes till they mat together. The vat was kept in a water bath to maintain the temperature
- Turn the mass of curds over and wait 15 minutes. Drain the whey
- Break the mass in two and let them rest on their sides. Wait 15 minutes. Drain the whey
- Turn the two pieces over. Wait 15 minutes. Drain the whey
- Break the curd into pieces of around 5x2x2cm
- Soak the curds with portwine for 30 minutes. Halfway the curds was mixed in order to soak all the pieces
- Drain the portwine/whey and add half the salt. Mix it in and mix the rest of the salt in
- Curds packed in a cloth covered mould (20 cm in diameter)
- Press the cheese:
2,2 psi for 30 mins
4,4 psi for 30 mins
8,8 psi for 1 hr
8,8 psi for 9 hrs (without cloth on top)*
16,2 psi for 15 mins (without cloth)*
I was using a mould with a diameter of 20 cm / 8 inches:
50 kg / 110 pounds for 30 mins
100 kg / 221 pounds for 30 mins
200 kg / 441 pounds for 1 hr
200 kg / 441 pounds for 9 hrs (without cloth on top)*
370 kg / 816 pounds for 15 mins (without cloth)*
If I had used a mould with a diameter of 10 cm / 4 inches it would have been:
13 kg / 27,7 pounds for 30 mins
25 kg / 55,4 pounds for 30 mins
50 kg / 111 pounds for 1 hr
50 kg / 111 pounds for 9 hrs (without cloth on top)*
93 kg / 204 pounds for 15 mins (without cloth)*
Calculations:
Area of mould in inches = 3,14 * (Mould diameter/2)^2
Weight in pounds needed = Pressure in psi * Area of mould in inches
Weight in kg needed = Weight in pounds needed * 0.45
* Sometimes I do not fold the cheesecloth over the top of the cheese during some of the pressing. This makes it easier to avoid deep imprints from the cloth. I think that the draining is OK anyway. I normally press for a short period without any cloth at all at the end to make the surface smooth and nice.
Images of the process will follow...
