30 min Mozza issues

[Tobiasrer]

So I have tried 2x to make the 30 min mozza, and I am ending up with a cheese spread.
I know from reading that this is not the easiest or best recipe to start with but I am not a big fan of soft cheeses.

The first try my curd looked alot like cottage cheese small and liquidy (maybe not a word but it works), I drained it as best I could and began the process of microwaving, and it got more and more liquid, ending basically with cheese sauce, absolutely no stretch.

Tonight the curd looked more solid, and I was more hopeful, but still it looks grainy and as I heat it it just turns to liquid and NO stretch at all.

I am using store bought milk, that is pasteurized and homogenized.
I added some heavy cream to 2%milk yesterday.
Today I added again heavy cream to it and some milk powder, I don't have calcium chloride, would this help, is it the milk, the process, the recipe or Me?

Before I spend more money in my pursuit of cheese making I would like to see some success   

[linuxboy]

Try another brand of milk.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Tob,

As we have said many times in the Forum, Mozz is really not a beginner cheese. Quality of the milk is a huge issue, so as LB said, you can try another milk. Mozz is really sensitive to pH. Too high and it won't stretch. Too low and it just breaks instead of stretching. There are MANY other cheeses that you can try that won't be so frustrating - Queso Blanco for example..

Hang in there - we've all been where you are.

[linuxboy]

Yeah, thing is, for direct acidified mozz... when the milk was really fantastic, I have been able to get a decent stretch from 5.8 down to 5.3. That's a difference of almost a teaspoon per gallon when using citric acid. So I think in most cases, if the milk was good enough, it's forgiving enough to still work. This is not to say that acidity is not important... it's crucial.

[Tobiasrer]

Ok, kinda what I thought, I will just press on and try another. I dont have any way of measuring the Ph, and so figured the citric acid would HELP make Ph fluctuations a bit less then a bacteria method. But I mean it was still fun and the 'spread' I have made is nice on crackers so not a total waste.

[linuxboy]

which recipe?

[MrsKK]

That's the funny thing - I've had many more failures/iffy results from using the citric acid than I have from cultured mozz...and I always use raw milk.

[Tobiasrer]

I used a recipe adapted from ricki carroll I got in a magazine, I had rennet and citric acid so thought gotta start some where.