manchego recipe

[Boofer]

Your mold...is it perforated? Bottomless?

I would think you'd want to elevate it slightly off the drip pan so that it can drain properly.

Now arm yourself with...some patience.

What's this about violins in cheesemaking?

-Boofer-

[anutcanfly]

LOL    Now that you bring the subject up Boofer, I do try hard to avoid unnecessary violins during cheese making... but you know, sometimes a girls gotta do, what a girls gotta do! 

[scasnerkay]

Boofer: yes the mold is bottomless and perforated. However, at the end of the pressing there was hardly any whey coming out at all.

I judged it to be close enough to 5.5 pH at about 10:00 and put it in the brine for overnight and went to bed without testing out the contents of the shot glass!

The pretty cheese weighed in at 1 # 13 oz this morning. Seems quite dense, and smaller and certainly lighter than most cheeses I have made from 2 gallons of milk. Perhaps the waiting too long to cut the curd in the past "wheyed" into this, since this time I actually saw flocculation...

I would like to test this cheese at 3 weeks to see if I can assess a difference in the outcome from my other cheeses. Do you think that seems just too early?

[anutcanfly]

Patience Grasshopper...     I'd wait longer, but you can still continue to age the cheese in halves, so if curiosity gets the best of you, no harm is done.

[Boofer]

Frankly, yes, 3 weeks is a little early. As my esteemed colleague has suggested, wait a bit longer.

Check this and others. 60 days is the minimum.

-Boofer-

[Cloversmilker]

Last week I also tried out the manchego recipe from Karlin's book.  This was a 4+ gallon make; 3 gallons whole Jersey milk, 1+ gallon lightly skimmed.  I had intended to add 1/4 tsp saffron, but when I got the jar down I discovered that there were only about puny 8 threads remaining.  So this is a saffron-kissed manchego style cheese. 

[scasnerkay]

Clover: It is a thing of beauty! How did your experience go with floculation and curd formation? Did you measure pH?
Susan

[Cloversmilker]

Susan, your cheese is rather lovely itself.  Nice rind and good proportions.   

I don't have a pH meter, so try to follow time guidelines for cooking, stirring, etc.   I do try to keep track of floc time to calculate renneting time.  Floc time was 12 minutes, and I used a 3.5 multiplier.  My floc times have been quite long, I've been upping rennet gradually to get it down to 12 minutes. 

[anutcanfly]

Hi Cloversmilker, Beautiful cheese!  I've always been too cheap to by saffron. 

Hi Scasnerkay, your cheese looks very good.  I think you will be happy with the results.  I forgot to mention, but when you have trouble getting a big enough whey sample to test, try throwing more weight on the press.  So what was the last pH you got before you stopped measuring?

[OzzieCheese]

Ah a saffron infused Manchego is a thing of beauty.  I strain the theads off before adding to the milk at the start but add them back in just as I'm about to remove the whey.  The chesse matures with these wonderful golden thread throughout and is a wonder to behold when served.  It has a definite "oooh aaah!" factor.

-- Mal

[Cloversmilker]

My manchego will only have a few threads to exclaim over...  The local co-op carries a reasonably priced saffron, so next my next manchego style (gotta add that disclaimer  ) will be a little more colorful.