I felt really good about my last
Taleggio but I was troubled by the lands & grooves that the standard Taleggio mould followers created in the cheese. Although I managed to control the wild blues and other foreigners that tried to set up house, I thought there might be a better way to build a cheese. For this cheese, I followed the recipe from the
Taleggio Terzo.I had seen
Meadow Creek Dairy's Grayson awhile back and it looked attractive, having a lot of the good features of the Taleggio, but without the lands & grooves.
So I crafted two Lexan followers to replace the groovy ones. They seemed to perform well but I think the next iteration will have whey drainage holes. The flat faces of the cheese ended up with fairly good-sized divits. I'm hoping that the rind treatment will help to fill those in sufficiently.
You can divide the cheese made in this mould by using a quad-cutter. Unfortunately, the one that was designed is half the size that it needs to be. So I crafted a more reasonable quad-cutter. I haven't tried it yet, but I see it being used for Taleggio and
Pont l'Eveque, at the minimum.
It's in its minicave in the cave @ 46F. Fingers crossed.
At the end, I've attached some representative pics of Grayson...the cheese.
Edit: I wanted to call this cheese "Grayson", but that belongs to Meadow Creek Dairy, so I renamed it to a smooth-skin Taleggio. Now I'm thinking although the traditional groovy followers encourage errant blues, the grooves may enhance the draining and maturation of the cheese. I'll take this cheese through to completion and make a judgment call then.
-Boofer-