Hi Wayne
The recipe I followed was one I got off the Hard Cheeses Intermediate course I did. To be honest I have found that most of their recipes have been losely taken from Ricki Carrolls book so I kind of follow their recipe while also checking in with Ricki to see what she does. Some of the times for pitching and cooking were different as were and in my cheese course instructions there was no mention of curd size beyond the initial cut.
I am using Raw milk which was skimmed so should have been a low percentage. I did get quite a reduced yield compared to what I got for the other two batches from the same milk so I assume that suggests it was well skimmed. How does one measure this acurately?
The culture I use is the Chr Hansen product, culture YC-380.
My rennet is Renco.
The heating was when I really began to wonder if things were going right. The recipe instructed to bring the curds up to 48c over 45 minutes and then hold that temperature for another 45 minutes stirring regularly.
The curds were very firm in my opinion and definitely squeeky/rubbery.
I pressed for 30 minutes at 5kg, 2 hours at 10kg, 12 hours at 20kg and then on turning to press for another 12 hours at 10kg I discovered my mess
Any clues/advice you can give is much appreciated. I would love to get this right as we eat a ton of Parmesan and it's only right that a girl with Italian blood can make Italian cheese right?