Author Topic: Buttermilk blue cheese  (Read 4416 times)

T-Bird

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Buttermilk blue cheese
« on: February 27, 2012, 02:11:23 AM »
Anyone made a buttermilk blue cheese? My daughter had one at a restaurant last night said it was really good. I am thinking of trying it, bring some buttermilk up to temp, innoculate with p.roq., rennet, cut, drain , salt, mold why won't it work? The buttermilk is already cultured and acidified. Any thoughts?

tinysar

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #1 on: February 27, 2012, 06:31:07 AM »
I suspect that pure buttermilk would be too sour to use as a starting point - the commercial "buttermilk blues" seem to use full-cream milk with "buttermilk-like" cultures added - and their product looks very similar to a "Danish Blue".

But hey, nothing ventured...

« Last Edit: February 27, 2012, 06:37:02 AM by tinysar »

Offline H-K-J

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #2 on: February 29, 2012, 12:20:05 AM »
Sounds kinduh interrestin ::) let us know how it turns out
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Sailor Con Queso

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #3 on: February 29, 2012, 02:48:40 PM »
Use regular milk with buttermilk as your starter. Will not produce a sour taste. Buttermilk has primarily Meso bacteria.

T-Bird

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #4 on: March 01, 2012, 12:33:10 AM »
All that makes sense. I've never seen a recipe (not saying they don't exist). Just wondering what it might be. Thanks for the info.

Offline H-K-J

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #5 on: March 01, 2012, 08:44:10 PM »
My first few try's at blue cheeses I used doc Frankhouser's recipe where you can use his Neufchâtel which uses 1/4 cup buttermilk,
Here are his ingredients;
1 gallon fresh whole milk (store-bought may be used)
  (Use skimmed milk for low fat but less flavorful cheese)
1/4 cup cultured buttermilk 
   (or 2 ice cubes of frozen buttermilk)

1/4 tablet Rennet

So there's not much buttermilk in it of course he is only using it as a meso starter.
I kinduh wonder what would happen if you used say a quart buttermilk with 3 quarts milk.  ???
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tinysar

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #6 on: March 02, 2012, 11:02:34 AM »
Use regular milk with buttermilk as your starter. Will not produce a sour taste. Buttermilk has primarily Meso bacteria.

Of course. I just meant that buttermilk would be quite sour/cultured to use in place of the milk, as T-Bird originally suggested.

And of course, if it's traditional-style buttermilk, it will be made from skimmed milk - so this would have to be taken into account as well if you wanted to try using it in place of a significant proportion of the milk.

Tomer1

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #7 on: March 02, 2012, 11:35:56 AM »
I think what he meant to say that such a large porportion of basically, a bulk starter, will acidify your milk way beyond the normal rennet ph range of rennet coagulated cheese.  Im not sure what happends when you add rennet to such an extremly acidified milk.

Its an interesting expiriment though.

FRANCOIS

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #8 on: March 02, 2012, 12:14:25 PM »
It would instantly set rock hard.  You'd then get excessive calcium loss and drying of the curd during drainage.  Bulk cutlure is normally added in the 1-2% of total volume range....not 25%.

linuxboy

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2012, 12:35:26 PM »
Would also get weird calcium gradients in the cheese. Buttermilk is acidified to the isoelectric point of milk, to 4.6, or a little below. At that point, you have almost complete k-casein degradation and the bonds within micelles break up. If you add that to milk and set with rennet, you will get this weird blend of both fully lactic set and fully rennet set. Your gel will have all sorts of gradients in it, and during syneresis, drainage and calcium balance will be all over the place, like Francois said.

Curd technologies work for a reason - the science works. You can blend finished curds of similar moisture levels (eg. full lactic fully drained, full rennet fully drained), but not odd amalgams like 25% starters in the milk, unless you want to precipitate the proteins quickly with heat, like you do in tvorog variants, and let it find equilibrium over time as it acidifies in a lactic gel. The reason heat would work with a high starter rate is because b-lactoglobulin has a higher isoelectric point, at 5.2, and with heat, you will introduce enough destabilization to induce protein precipitation (let's remember that casein adsorbs lactoglobulin).

Basically, stick to what works and makes sense from a theoretical perspective. Sometimes, experimentation results in bits of brilliance, accidental or not. And other times, it doesn't. The truth is that for all the wide variety of cheeses out there, there are really three ways to make all of them: full rennet, semi-rennet, and full lactic. Everything fits within that continuum, and may use about the same starter amount to achieve each cheese.

T-Bird

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2012, 12:53:55 PM »
I intended to be asking if "buttermilk blue"was made from buttermilk or what. I didn't mean that I thought it could be done. Dr Fankhauser uses buttermilk for all his cheeses as a starter I think. He also uses Junket rennet lets it sit for 24+ hrs- works well for him, didn't for me.Tried it in the beginning. So, I guess my takeaway from this is that "buttermilk blue" is just a blue made with buttermilk as starter as far as anyone knows? Makes sense after reading all the comments. Thanks for the info, T-Bird

linuxboy

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #11 on: March 02, 2012, 12:59:48 PM »
Quote
"buttermilk blue" is just a blue made with buttermilk as starter as far as anyone knows?
Yes, basically. It's just a gimmick, as normal blue starter can be used to make a very respectable buttermilk. All smokes and mirrors to create product differentiation to be able to go to a consumer and say look at me, I'm a buttermilk blue, the rest aren't. Lipstick on a pig; it's still a pig. Roth Kase does this quite a bit... see their GranQueso (really, just a cow milk adjuncted manchego clone), etc.

FRANCOIS

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #12 on: March 02, 2012, 01:54:27 PM »
There's nothing wrong wih creative license.  It pays my salary.

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linuxboy

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #13 on: March 02, 2012, 02:03:55 PM »
Am in WA all this month, maybe in CA last week depending how projects go. Life's still crazy, hopefully for only another 2-3 months.

I am totally with you; everyone does it because it's a must to survive, and rightly so. All the great cheese traditions were driven by necessity. I respect Roth Kase, they make solid cheese.

T-Bird

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Re: Buttermilk blue cheese
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2012, 05:40:01 PM »
got it