My first Valencay-type cheeses

[tinysar]

This is my first attempt at a bloomy semi-lactic type cheese. I just used whatever ingredients/equipment I had around, which was goat's milk, meso culture, homemade ash & PC.

I tasted the first one after 6 days, before it had bloomed, and it was delicious! Strong goat-milk taste, very piquant and complex. Much drier than I had expected, given how wet the curds were when I put them in the fridge (even after overnight bag-draining and 2 days mold-draining). Next time I may add a little more salt, and perhaps try aging some of them wetter, but so far, I'm very happy with the result. The ripening boxes smell amazing!

You can just see the first mold appearing now, at 10 days old. They are aging at normal fridge temperature, so it's all going a bit slowly, but no problems so far.

[tinysar]

I had a question about these cheeses though - they're not really Valencays as they contain no Geo, and weren't made in square molds - so what is the proper name for them?

[iratherfly]

Give them your own name!  Crottins by the way are not made with ash and Geo appears naturally in almost any cheese out there, including Valençay.  How big are these? Cute shape!

[tinysar]

They're tiny! Around 120g, I would guess. I used this little ceramic mold that a friend gave me (I think it began life as the part of a teapot that you put the leaves in, but it was perfect for little cheeses), which is 6cm (about 2.5 inches) diameter at the widest point.

[tinysar]

I would have never thought of naming them myself, but it's a good idea - better than saying "those little moldy ashy goat's milk cheeses", which is their current name.

How about "Escher"?
The name means "from ash" in German, and if I really wanted to stretch things, "es cher" probably means something in French too: what would it be - "it's darling" or something?

[iratherfly]

Or maybe "little teapot"? Ash it a little ...dark. They seem cheery!

[DeejayDebi]

Very nice! They look like tiny thimbels!

[tinysar]

This is how they're looking at 3 weeks - well, this is actually a cow's milk batch done the day after the goat's milk ones above. For some reason, they don't have the amazing aroma of the goaty ones (in fact they smell a bit unpleasant), but the PC mold is progressing quite a bit faster on the cow-curd. I haven't been game to try one of these too early because of the smell - I'm going to let them age properly - bloom and form a rind - before I attack them.

[iratherfly]

Open the lid. Way too much moisture for 3rd week, you will get ammonia smell/taste and thick skin (possibly slipping). Thankfully you've used ash which will reduce that effect and probably give it some mushroomy tones with all that moisture.

[tinysar]

Open the lid. Way too much moisture for 3rd week, you will get ammonia smell/taste and thick skin (possibly slipping). Thankfully you've used ash which will reduce that effect and probably give it some mushroomy tones with all that moisture.

Thanks for the tip. The containers aren't airtight & the fridge has low humidity, so they're really not as wet as that photo suggests - I think that's mainly condensation caused by leaving the cold container sitting on the bench while I photographed it. There is definitely no ammonia smell - the unpleasant smell I was talking about was something else, which I can't identify, but it seems to be fading as the mold develops.

Very nice! They look like tiny thimbels!

Hah! Thumbelina cheese!

I had a question though - should this type of cheese have its mold "knocked down" like with a Camembert? My Valencay recipe doesn't say a word about rind care, and the fuzz is getting pretty thick on some of them now. Does it just die back as the cheese ages, or should I be brushing it down?