John's Cheese #008 - Cream Cheese #1, Boursin Garlic & Fine Herbs Flavored

[Cheese Head]

Today I made my first ever Cream Cheese using the recipe for the Uncooked Curd Method recipe in Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making book. The reason for making Cream Cheese was to use 1/2 as a base for making Boursin style flavoured cream cheese spread as per this thread.

MAY 10, 2008

• Let 1/2 US gallon/1.8 liter of Homogenized Pasteurized Half & Half reduced fat cream in cardboard container box warm to room temperature of in my case 76 F/24 C.
• Opened container, added 3 ounces (last 3 ice cubes, needed 5!)/120 ml of Simple Mesophilic Starter Culture based on recipe posted here, stirred in thoroughly.
• Clipped container closed and left on counter overnight.

MAY 11, 2008

• 7:00AM Opened container, found Half & Half was still fully liquid, not solid curd as per recipe.
• 7:30AM Decided to change and use part of Cream Cheese recipe posted here.
• 1:00PM Added another 3 ounces/90 ml Mesophilic Starter Culture, diluted Rennet in 2 ounces/50 ml water as per container directions, stirred in thoroughly, and re-clip sealed container to hopefully let curd set.
• 2:00PM Half & Half curd had set reasonably well, poured into cheesecloth sheet lined colander, and hung to drain whey.
• 4:00PM Put cloth back into colander and scraped filter cake thoroughly off sides and mixed in, re-hung, dripping quickly again.
• 5:30PM Repeated above step.
• 7:00PM Repeated above step.
• 9:30PM Move Cream Cheese to sealed container, weighed, made 2lb/0.9 kg Cream Cheese (without container), placed in fridge.

MAY 12, 2008
Made Boursin brand style spreadable cream cheese with half, 1 lb/0.45 kg, of the cream cheese. Merging back of Boursin packaging ingredients list & above recipes:

• 4 crushed cloves garlic - I used jar of crushed garlic (sad but true)
• 2 tablespoons finely diced minced parsley - I used dry parsley (even sader)
• 2 tablespoon minced Chives - I used none as had none
• Coarsely ground fresh black pepper - I used almost 1 tablespoon pre-ground black pepper

Put in fridge to mature the herb flavor through the cheese.

MAY 13, 2008
Flavor throughout the cheese, family very impressed, will all be gone by weekend!

THOUGHTS

• Didn't use enough starter culture resulting in cream not setting overnight and thus having to add more starter & rennet to get to gel. Rennet was not in recipe. End result was cream at room temperature for extra 7 hours. While tasted fine, could have led to airborne bacterial infection. Next time use enough starter!
• Periodically opening hanging bag and scraping off filter cake to allow cheese to drain whey faster worked well, saved several hours hanging at room temperature and thus reduced change of airborne bacteria infection.
• Making Boursin brand style spreadable cream cheese was very popular, next time line up ingredients in advance.

[Cheese Head]

First 4 pictures . . .

[Cheese Head]

Second 4 pictures . . .

[Cheese Head]

Third 1 picture . . .

[LadyLiberty]

Hi John.  When you say you added part of the cream cheese recipe, what did you mean? 

Thanks

[Cheese Head]

Umm, this batch was a long time ago, hard to remember, I think I had a problem as my homemade meso starter did not coagulate the half and half so as time was getting long I went the Cream Cheese recipe route and used rennet, which wasn't in the original recipe.