Size of tomme in a recipe seems too big

[Mina]

Hi
About to make a gouda and according to the book i'm following (Artisan Cheesemaking at Home) it tells me to use an 8" tomme for a 2 gallon batch?  Does this seem too large??  I've looked at some other recipes online but most don't indicated a max diametre.  At a loss!  I fear that I may end up with a frisbee of a gouda

[ArnaudForestier]

Your instincts are right.  That mould is designed for 4-6 gallon tommes.  I deal mostly with get culture.com, but looking just now oddly, to me, the difference between the large and small tomme isn't much - "2-3 pounds" v. "2-4 pounds."  Odd because I only use the large for tommes and I get anywhere from 4-6 pound cheeses, with good form factor.  New England Cheesemaking has several sizes, as well.  Looks like they have several choices that should work.

[Mina]

Thanks Paul .  Took a quick look at getculture.com's gouda and it does not specify size of mold to use either.
I have several size molds already...ordered them some time ago in anticipation of making from the book i mentioned, but now I'm very confused.  Made a couple of asiagos and used a 6" mould...after pressing they were only about 2.25" high.  No idea if this is a good ratio of h x w.
Am i making more of this than I should be?

[awakephd]

Hi Mina, and welcome to the forum!

I'm with Paul - 8" is way, way too large for this size make. I would think even a 6" mold might be too large - yes, 2.25" by 6" seems too thin to me. As I recall, with a 2-gallon make, I used a 4.5" diameter mold - not where I can measure it right now, but it was in that vicinity, certainly no more than 5".

[mikekchar]

I was thinking about this today because I have a new mould and was also wondering how much milk I need for my make tomorrow.  I did some googling around and it appears that cheese has a very similar density to that of water.  I guess the fat (which is less dense than water) makes up for the other solids.  So that means that a 1 kg cheese takes up about 1 litre of space.  The mould needs to be about twice the size to accommodate pressing, I guess.  It takes about ~8 litres (~2 gal) of milk to produce ~1 kg (~2 lbs) of cheese.

The area of a circle is pi * r^2 (i.e. 3.14159 * radius * radius).  4.5 inches is 11.5 cm and if that's diameter, then the radius is 5.75 cm.  This gives you an area of 104 square cm.  This means that for every inch (2.54 cm) height of the cheese you will have 104 * 2.54 = 264 grams of cheese.  A 2 lb cheese is 907 grams, so that's 3.4 inches tall (8.6 cm) and the mould needs to be about 6.8 inches (17.2 cm) tall to accommodate pressing.

Judging by awakephd's post, they already did this math, but I thought I'd write it out in case it is useful for other people... :-)

[awakephd]

Sounds about right! I don't know why people are scared of the math; it's as easy as pi ...

[Mina]

Thanks everyone!
I was able to download a nifty xl sheet that does the calculations based on amount of milk and size of mold etc.  I'm assuming that this is just a general rule of thumb?
Would this 'math' be for all types of pressed cheeses? 

[awakephd]

Yes, general rule of thumb. For one thing, the yield will be considerably different for a drier cheese such as parmesan than for a more moist cheese. Also, some cheeses are best made will little fat, others with lots - and again can affect yield quite significantly.