Hi All,
Yesterday i made my first cheese and i think it turned out well. I decided to make a feta as i could age it in brine in the fridge and i could have a bash at cheesemaking with out as much of an outlay, not to mention feta tastes pretty good.
i used the recipe supplied with my feta cheese kit as supplied by an online store called 'Cheeselinks' (
http://www.cheeselinks.com.au/).
I used 8L of store bought unhomogenisd guernsey milk and lipase was added. Vegetabl rennet was used and i used a mesophilic starter culture.
I used an Ikea plastic tub of about 13L size to make my cheese in, i just floated it in the kitchen sink with warm water in and an aquarium heater set on 34oC ( ripening temp of 32oC) which all in all, the set up was quite satisfactory and maintained a nice constant temp.
I got a clean break in the curd after 60minutes of undisturbed ripening and i then cut the curds, i ended up with some fairly large curd chunks but i managed to reduce their size during the half hourly cut curd stirring.
I placed the curd into the rectangular baskets but i ended up too much curd ( not a bad things id say) and so i put the last of it into cheesecloth to hang. The curds in the baskets got turned about 3 times over six hours and then left a further 8 hours till morning.
I cut the cheese in the morning into ~ 1 inch cubes and placed into a 14% brine solution i had made up the night before. The cheese seemed slightly soft/spongy but it rebounded quickly.
At the time of cutting the cheese tasted like feta minus the salt. This evening the wife and I tried a cube after being in brine for about 12 hours and we both thought it tasted good, albeit a bit salty but i guess when taken straight out of brine and eaten it will tend to be salty.
Some things Im curious about is the use of iodised salt, ive read that noniodised salt is best but after brineing i remembered i hadnt bought any non-iodised and used the normal variety, am I to anticipate anyproblems with the use of iodised salt?
Also i wonder about the use of CaCl2, the idea of adding it to the brine to help with Ca equilibrium in the solution and cheese seems reasonable, and i was wondering if its needed still if you have good acid levels and no sign of softening etc.
Anyway here are some pics of my cheese. Thanks