Hi all,
I have tried to find the article about how to clean cloths which I thought I saw mentioned, but haven
t been able to.
Anyway, I have had this problem several times where I make the cheese (warming, adding, setting, etc) and somewhere along the line something gets in which acts like yeast but doesn't smell like yeast. Now I reognize the smell and stop, but before I continued, and the cheese will swell and be full of holes and spongey (and impossible to press!) This does not happen all the time, maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of the time.
The smell is mild and not unpleasant, but it is not like bread (I bake bread). It doesn't even smell "off," altho now I know it means trouble. In fact, the smell is mostly in the whey and not all that noticeable in the cheese itself. And the curds float.
I'm using raw milk from our cow.
/This has happened both before I got the sanitizer and after I started using it, so I'm thinking it's the cloths and towels, because I use cloth to strain the milk and of course towels to dry my hands, etc.
So, if anyone has any suggestions as to what it is, how to prevent it, or even how to handle my cloths, because I can't use paper towels to strain the milk, I'd really appreciate it.
I figure I can wash and boil the cloths, no problem, but what I can't figure out is how to dry them, because if I dry them in the machine, well, first, it's an extra-large machine so not so good for a handful of stuff, and seconddly, I dry everything else in there, so it doesn't seem like a good idea, but if I air-dry them, then they are exposed to stuff also.
How did people avoid this in the olden days before they had paper towels and all that?
Thanks for any advice