Author Topic: Low yield miniature Gruyere  (Read 1398 times)

Zoey

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Low yield miniature Gruyere
« on: July 14, 2010, 06:55:20 AM »

So I restarted with cheese making after a long break.

I felt like doing something different from my usual Gouda-Havarti-Blue -routines, so I decided to go for Gruyere. I made a 9,5 liter batch using pasteurised store bought milk.

Everything went really well, until I pressed the cheese and ended up with this really tiny, hilarious puck of cheese measuring around 6cm in height and 13cm in width (that's around 2,5" by 5").

Is there any change to age this without it becoming all-rind? I was thinking, this will probably dry out really quickly and all I'll be left with is an all-through-rind.

Otherwise it seems fantastic. I got the temperatures, curd sizes, pressing and everything just right, I think. The pressed cheese is looking fantastic.

I was actually prepared to get a low yield, but since I usually get around 8-9cm thick cheeses with this amount of milk in this mold, I didn't realize how much the yield would be less, and how much lower the cheese therefore would become.

Normally Gruyere is made with a natural rind, right? Is there any point in truing to reduce the dry rind by waxing, oiling or similar?

It's brining right now. I'll take a pic when it's ready to cave.

Zoey

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Re: Low yield miniature Gruyere
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2010, 07:59:39 AM »

Addition: I used this recipe by linuxboy:
http://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1590.0.html

Only with some modifications:

- I had trouble keeping my ripening stage temperature steady, so instead of 15mins @ 32 degrees, it became 15mins @ starting temp 32, finishing temp 35.

- Raising temp to 50 took me 40mins instead of 60.

- Instead of press under own weight, I pressed the 0,7-1kg cheese (weight is an estimate) with 0,7kg of weight. Actually I wasn't sure whether the recipe meant to say exactly this, or just to let the cheese press itself. Well, that's what I did, and it ended up looking nice.

- I'm not sure, but I would assume that the higher temperature in phase 1 would promote more acidity, and the shorter cooking time would promote lower acidity. Am I right? So I'm hoping that these two will counter-do one another. But I still have to admit they were both mistakes, not intentional doings.