Hi Everyone,
I am delighted to find this forum! I am a newbie from Milford Oh. Yesterday was my first venture into making the 2 day version of mozzarella. (Have made yogurt and Paneer in the past). I was following the Fankhauser instructions...I also used a youtube video (good pictures) called "Making Mozzarella from Milk" which was similar to Fankhousers recipe and process.
I used 1 gallon of non-homogenized low temp pasturized milk
cultured buttermilk from grocery store
malaka rennet (expiration Feb 11)
First I sterilized the pot and utensils
heated the milk to 85 F
Added 1/4 cup buttermilk
waited one hour
Added 20 drops of rennet mixed with 1/4 cup of reverse osmosis water
Stirred for about 20 seconds
It took 8 hours to get to clean break stage
I cut the curd
Heated it slowly to 97F stirring gently all the while heating
Left it covered at room temperature during the night
In the morning (10 am) I drained the whey and did a spin test
heated some reverse osmosis water to 185 F
added some curd and tried to fold it...no spin, it breaks up into little bits
Checked again at 2 PM, same thing
Hoping some experts here can give me some help as to what might be going on, and if it isn't going to spin ever, do I press it and will it ever become hard cheese? (Or do I just have more Paneer here?? )
I don't have any way to measure the acidity...(I will have to remedy that!
)
Hope I am doing this posting ok...
Thanks, BJ