Hi all, had 4 gallons of raw goat milk taking up too much room in the fridge so I decided to make Caciotta. Mostly followed Jim Wallace's recipe but of course jumped ship whenever I felt like it. I didn't use a mystery culture packet from New England Cheesemaking. I used Thermo B from Abiasa and some FLAV 54 as an adjunct culture because I wanted to encourage some sweet notes and I also added a bit of mycodore because my plans for this cheese are/were to play with the aging options. I might age some in ash in a terra-cotta pot. I also have some lovely fine hay that I might age another one in and then there are those leaves I have that have been soaking in brandy for 2 years now....they're just waiting for something spectacular to do. But plans have changed a wee bit, or rather gotten more interesting. I picked a bunch of shiitake mushrooms from our logs and have put one on each cheese to leave overnight. They should all drop their spores overnight and make very nice spore prints on the cheeses. The cheeses haven't been brined yet so I'm thinking I'll not flip them in the brine but rather maybe lightly salt the top of maybe do nothing on the top...maybe use something to make sure they submerge as deeply as possible without the top being submerged. My make notes are pitiful so I won't bother sharing them here. I hit some of my temperature targets but mostly flew by the seat of my pants accomplishing other things as the make happened in the flow of the day.
Has anyone else done fun stuff with Caciotta aging? I'll look for threads when/if I have a chance. Life is busy here......
