Hi all...
So I finally did it -- after a long period of time spent reading, collecting little things to make the task easier, cleaning out the garage and just generally living a very hectic life I finally made a cheese.
Last night I put together a 1-gallon (triple-cream) camembert... Lessons learned:
1- patience, young grasshopper!
2- be gentle with the curds -- I allowed the first ladel-full of curds to fall into the mould from too high a height. The result? The fell right through!
3- I need a better initial drying space/system. -- lack of planning didn't help here!
4- My Wyott drop-in food warmer is really nice..
I did, however, remember to put geo and p. cand in.. :-) I've read about that one too many times.. :-)
One minor disaster was that on the first "flip" of the cheeses, they got messed up... I was able to re-form them, but that's something I need to solve in the future for these non-pressed cheeses. This morning they came out of the molds and looked pretty good... I salted the "tops" and will flip again and salt the "bottoms" tonite or tomorrow...
-M