I decided to start an experiment yesterday by making an unnamed pair of cheeses. I got a bit curious reading about Butterkase and how it uses a mesophilic culture initially and switches to predominantly thermophilic activity after heating the milk. Using this as a baseline, I started a batch of milk as follows:
Ingredients:
- 3 liters pasteurized milk (no access to raw unfortunately)
- 400 mL 43% cream
- 200 g milk powder (26% fat---used in place of calcium chloride since I still have a whole lot of milk powder)
- 68g mesophilic mother culture (2% by weight---not sure since I used a Fromage Blanc DS packet to create the mother culture but maybe something like FD or Aroma B)
- 34g thermophilic mother culture (1% by weight---Yogotherm yogurt cultures)
- 1g single strength rennet
Given the added cream and milk powder, I'm guessing the total milkfat is about 9-10%.
Process:
- heat to 30C and add cultures
- ripen for 90 mins (sorry no pH meter)
- heat to 42C and add rennet
- flocculation multiplier = 6x (about 27 minutes for me)
- cut vertically into 2cm cubes, heal for 5 mins
- cut horizontally, rest for 10 mins
- scoop into molds, maintaining the warm environment for about 2 hours
- flip at 30, 90, 150, and finally at 210 minutes
- continue draining at room temperature (about 20-25C I guess)
- total drain time is about 21 hours
- dry salt to 2% of cheese weight
If you haven't noticed by now, I'm working with limited supplies and materials so I make cheese with what I can find.
Using my *improvised* cheese molds, I ended up with two cheeses weighing about 570g and 590g before salting. Now the cheeses are in their salting phase.
After they dry, I'm planning on having some fun with the two. I'll inoculate both of them with Geo and PC but while I'll let one of the twins fully bloom, I plan on converting the other to a washed rind in the middle.
I'll take some pictures after the drying as the cheese is very delicate right now and I broke a small chunk off (needs to drain more it turns out). Also, I'm curious... Do these cheeses have names?