Low fat stabilised camembert

[shaneb]

Thanks Andy.

Shane

[shaneb]

The end result was that the camembert turned out pretty good. I'm still not a huge fan, but my wife was certainly happy. This evening I baked one in an air fryer with rosemary sprigs, honey and chilli flakes. Fresh bread was then dipped in it. It turned out great and was very tasty.

Below are some final photos. I haven't opened the Cambozola yet.

Shane

[Kern]

Looking good, Shane.  A Cheese for you efforts.   

I've got some Cambozola in the aging box also - made by spraying PC and Geo over the pierced wheel containing the P. roqueforti.  A lot of the blue color leaked to the outside during draining and it seems like the PC and Geo have taken about twice as long as normal to cover the cheese.  But, I think they've finally won the battle!   

[shaneb]

Thanks Kern. I'm looking forward to seeing your Cambozola. If I make this cheese again I will do so as a straight camembert batch. Spraying the PC added extra days to the time in the cave and I think this affected how it ripened in the cold fridge. On the outside of the cheese was runny, while the centre was still quite firm. I'll add the PC to the milk. Maybe if I had GC to spray it might have been different, but I'm not sure.

I'll hopefully open the Cambozola on the weekend to take a look inside. I never did get a solid coating on mine. Maybe the round dried out too much??

Shane

[OzzieCheese]

Hi Shane,
I held off in commenting  - as you are sure to know - there are many ways to the cheese.  But a few things that will make the Cams better and a few of those I think you have already discovered.  I hope you don't mind a bit of a critique.  I might start at a low fat decision - I think I understand why and there are ways to reduce the Lactose sensitivity and still enjoy soft cheeses - I think you already know of it. A Lactase replacement - LACTEEZE.  Lactase is an enzyme produced by many organisms. It is located in on the brush border of the small intestine of humans and other mammals. Lactase is essential to the complete digestion of whole milk. Lactase breaks down lactose. Don't know how much it costs but added to the milk 12-24 hours before making cheese will reduce the overall residual Primary lactose in the end product as it is broken down into it's two primary sugars.  from wiki: Lactose is a disaccharide (two Sugars) sugar derived from Galactose and Glucose.  The great thing about cheese cultures - their first job it the creation of these to primary sugars and then consume them and make lactic acid.  Now I not saying that it gets rid of all the lactose but it will greatly reduce the Primary Sugar. If that helps.

The added cream and high fat content in my make is another way of creating a stabilised curd. The issue with the Thermo added is that it never gets into a good temp range by which the necessary pH drop is generated - hence conversion of Lactose.

1. Add both G.C and P.C to the milk I use a ratio 4:1 (P.c to G.c) - well as close any way.  As another here mentioned the G.c sets up the outside but raising the pH so that the P.C can quickly get established.
2. The Floc time was good and the Temps look great.
3. I tried with my first ones spraying the P.C. and just didn't do it for me - maybe I was a little heavy handed and just soaked the surface.
4. The cut open picture shows that the resolubalisation process has got too fast - too soon.  Now this might have a couple of causes but I think the main one is that the pH of the cheese was too high to start with.  The process actually has to go through the 4.7- 4.8 range (help keep the other bugs at bay) through the range to finish almost back into the 6.4 range.  By then the P.c has your back covered in keeping the other mold out while supporting the ripening process.

Hope that helps somewhat

-- Mal

[shaneb]

Hi Mal,

Thanks for all of your advice. It is all good to know. The purpose of this cheese was not the lactose aspect as it was for my wife. It was actually on her request to stop loading her up with highly fattening cheese.  It was a compromise.

Unfortunately my cheap pH meter went for a swim and didn't survive it, so at the moment I don't have any monitoring. I'll need to order a recent probe for my good meter. I had been putting it off but now the other one is dead, I'll need to just do it.

Thanks again for sharing your wisdom.  It's great to get this help when we're just starting out.

I have a cheddar to post soon which is a bit out of the ordinary. Hopefully I'll get to post the details tomorrow.

Shane