I split this gorgonzola recipe into a gorgonzola and a stichelton. The basic procedure comes from Carroll's Gorgonzola Dolce. It's my sixth time making it. The variation is that during draining, I diverted approximately one third of the make to form a stichelton. Here is the process and photos:
1) 12L skim milk, 1.5L 33% cream brought to 30C.
2) While warming the above, soak 1/16 tsp of my special P. roqueforti mixture in 250mL 2% milk. You can see from photo 1 that there are still some sour dough bread particles present. I filtered them before addition.
3) Once the milk/cream is warm (photo 2), add one packet of Carroll's C101 culture.
4) Add the blue mould.
5) Add 3/4 tsp lipase to 250mL water. Stir then add to the make.
6) Ripen for 60 minutes. Stir occasionally.
7) Five minutes before the ripening time, add 1/2 tab of vegetable rennet to 250 mL previously-boiled water.
8 ) After 60 minutes of ripening, add the rennet solution, gently stir in an up-and-down motion for one minute. Let sit. (Time to flocculation was 12 minutes, times flocculation factor of four means total time of 48 minutes.
9) Cut the curds into 3cm cubes (photo 3). By this time the temperature had accidently risen to 44C. The whey was steaming!
10) Stir the curds gently three times over 5 minutes.
11) Settle for 15 minutes.
12) Whey off three litres. Reserve for ricotta. At this point my young apprentice asked “why does the cheese juice smell so bad.” I could only suggest it was because of the high temperature, but it didn't smell bad to me, just cheesy.
13) Settle for 5 minutes.
14) Stir gently for 5 minutes.
15) Whey off another three litres. Reserve for ricotta.
16) Transfer approximately two-thirds of the curds to the gorgonzola mould (photos 4 and 5).
17) After 15 min, the curd had sunk to the top of the mould, so I flipped it. Continue flipping every 15 minutes until the curds will fit into the other mould (the smaller that I had intended to use for it).
18) Once the gorgy was safely flipped a few times, it could fit into the smaller mould, I turned my attention to the stichelton draining in the basket (photo 6). I tied a knot and flipped the whole (photo 7).
19) After 90 minutes of draining, the stichelton appeared quite solid so I began the milling process prior to salting (photo 8 ). The wet curd weighed 1.235kg, so I sprinkled 12.4g of kosher salt (1% of the cheese weight) into the curd and mixed it up by hand.
20) After 15 minutes, I repeated the salting with the same mass of salt. Mixed again and waited 15 minutes. By this time, some more whey began to be released from the curd.
21) I transferred the curd to a cheese-cloth lined mould (the larger one which has a follower). This cheese has a totally different feel from the gorgy. Whereas the gorgy was smooth and springy, the stichelton was more resistant to pressure and almost crumbly.
22) Let the stichelton rest for 15 minutes, flip, rest for 15 minutes and flip.
23) By this time the two paths rejoin. In the photo, the gorgonzola is on the left and the stichelton is on the right in my 30-cent press. Flip every hour for four hours. Then let sit overnight.
More updates to come.
