Hello fellows.
I'm Alex, this is my first post on this forum.
I was lurking here a while and studied everyone's stories, yesterday I tried for the first time to make mozzarella with REAL starter cultures!... and failed... Before that I made only the mozzarella with the citric acid, without any culture.
I used the Gianaclis Caldwell "long" recipe, wanted to train for more serious cheese, but at some point something went wrong.
I will describe the steps, and maybe someone will be willing to help an absolute beginner like me. Also, I attached all the photos that seem relevant to me, if You need more information, I'll be glad to provide it.
I used fresh raw milk from the local farmers (yeah, I'm very lucky).
1. I warmed 1 gallon (4.5l) of milk to 80F (27C) in water bath, sprinkled the culture on the top (~1/8tsp) and waited for it to rehydrate for 4 minutes, then stirred for 1 minute. The culture:
http://cheeseandyogurtmaking.com/cheese-making-supplies/cheese-making-cultures/mesophilic-cheese-starter-culture-for-cheese-making.html . Used Mesophilic instead of Thermophilic, but kept an eye on the temperature to keep it at 32C.
2. Increased to 90F (32C), left it untouched for 70 minutes.
3. Stirred in the rennet. The dosage was 24 drops per gallon (approx .75g) of 1:10,000 liquid animal rennet from Bulgaria. It was very ok in pair with the citric acid, and it's surely not expired. I was using 8 drops (.25ml) for 1.5l of milk and the result was perfect.
4. Here comes the problem. I was going to measure the flocculation time, but it was completely absent! I was spinning a small plastic bowl every minute, then every 10 minutes, after 1.5 hours I gave up. It wasn't coagulating at all. After some hours the milk started to coagulate, but the curd had a really strange form. There was a lot of cream on top and the curd was "ripped" (I'll try to upload a photo).
When the curds were firm to cut, I cut them and followed the remaining steps. But it was too late, the curd was obviously too acidic (at this point it should be still sweet, this one was sour) and it was crumbly. I drained it in cloth and pretend that I was going to make cottage cheese
I want to figure out what I did wrong and how to correct my process.
My guess is that I was using too small an amount of rennet. Or maybe I need to let the milk to ripen for a longer time...
I have no means to measure the pH for now, so I cannot tell when it drops for .2. I ordered some pH strips of small range to at least measure the approximate pH and to see where's the problem, but they are still on the way.