Author Topic: It's time to cut my second hard cheese  (Read 1457 times)

Offline Albert

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It's time to cut my second hard cheese
« on: March 27, 2013, 06:30:30 PM »
Hi everyone.
After 70 days waiting patiently, it's time to cut my second hard cheese, the first made with goat's milk. The goats are murciano-granadinas, a really dairy breed of mediterranean goats. 
I was trying to do as the first time a blasphemic version of a Monterey recipe and I'm quite happy with the results. The natural rind is nice and the cheese tastes really good, hard flavour due to raw milk. The only think I don't like is that the paste is too crumbly, I was expecting a more elastic paste. But I don't know why it happens, maybe the RH was too low?
Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
I show you some pics. Thanks and best regards from Catalunya.

WovenMeadows

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Re: It's time to cut my second hard cheese
« Reply #1 on: March 27, 2013, 09:50:12 PM »
Crumbly texture is, I think, from more acid development in pre-pressing, vat stage, characteristic of cheddar type cheeses. Did your Jack recipe call for washing the curd, or just cooking, draining, and pressing? My Jack's all came out crumbly as well, until I discovered washed-curd recipes that yield a product truer to what I expect from a young Jack (a make similar to Colby). After all, without washing the curd, one is basically making a cheddar minus the cheddaring process (which many Tomme recipes are similar to as well). Without washing the curd, other ways to reduce the acidity are to pre-ripen for less time, cook at higher temps (where the bacteria are not as active), and drain as soon as the curd is properly textured, and dry salt the curd before pressing, also don't press too warm.

Offline Tiarella

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Re: It's time to cut my second hard cheese
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2013, 11:29:59 PM »
Your cheese is lovely looking!!!  Congratulations!   :D