I made this cheese using Vacherin mont d'Or recipe and method but minus the spruce bark. I used dried coconut leaves that I soaked in brine instead. I call this cheese amber line, from the amber colour of the coconut leaves on the sides of the cheese.
Recipe:
4 ltr P&H milk
1/4 tsp Cacl
300 ml uht cream
60 ml kefir
1/32 tsp PC
Half 1/64 GC (teeny tiny amount)
1/16 tsp renco calf rennet powder diluted in 1/4 cup unchlorinated water
Saturated brine
The cheese make
Heat to milk and cream separately in water bath, when it reach 26-27 mix them and heat together to 32C total should be in about 30 minutes.
Add cacl.
Add kefir and molds, stir thoroughly (3-5 minutes).
Leave it 90 minutes.
Make sure temp still 32C, add rennet. Flocc (this time 8 minutes) times 6 (multiplier 6)>> 54.
Clean break at 58 minutes.
Cut the curd into big squares. Leave for 10 minutes.
Swirl the pot around for 15 minutes until whey comes up.
Formed the cheese into 3 moulds. Done in 15-20 minutes. This was 4 pm.
Flip after 30 minutes.
Flip again after another 30.
Leave it for 2-3 hrs (went out).
Flip again. This was 9 pm.
Leave it overnight.
Flip once more.
After completed from the end of forming and flipping last night 12 hrs, brined them 30 minutes (15 minutes each side). 9 am.
Put back in forms.
Leave it for 6-8 hrs.
Apply coconut leaves (soaked in light brine for 24 hrs). Place in muslin lined wooden plank, covered. (Draining mat first at the bottom).
After 12 hrs, the smell is sweet and a little yeasty, like coconut fermented drinks.
After 28 hrs, the surface still moist but you can tell the molds is starting to grow. The smell still sweet yeasty fermented coconut drink. A little like tapai ketan (Indonesian fermented rice).
I flipped them into a muslin covered bambu chopping board now. Temp around 22-23, inside a box maybe around 85-90 humidity.
After 12 more hrs (40 hrs total), the white molds starts to grow on the face up side, not too much but you can tell it is there. The other side is damp bordering wet. The cheeses are flipped into muslin lined bamboo board (fresh muslin which I microwave for 90 seconds). They still have a sweet fermented coconut smell. 1 of them has a slight puffing on a small area (1/6th of side up face). The coconut leafs start to adhere to the rind. They went in to the cave of 15 C in the box today. For only 5 hrs.
I put them in warmer cave around 18-20C now. I also changed the wood using paulownia wood and changed the rubber band using jute rope.