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CHEESE TYPE BOARDS (for Cheese Lovers and Cheese Makers) => RENNET COAGULATED - Hard Grana (Grating Cheesee) => Topic started by: Cheese Head on January 17, 2009, 07:06:49 PM
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Credit to chilipepper for finding these pictures of Parmigiano-Reggiano (http://photos.hhoffman.co.uk/p169950970/) & Grana Padano (http://photos.hhoffman.co.uk/p56769887/) cheese making factories in Italy and original Henry Hoffman article (http://hhoffman.wordpress.com/2006/05/22/from-parmigiano-reggiano-to-grana-padano/) on making these cheeses.
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I checked it out last night. Very nice facility and good pictures. I didn't look around too much as I was going to bed, but will disect the site further later today. The only bad thing I saw was that the author's comments were cut off so I'll try and see if there is a regular blog to read on the making of.
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This is a great set of links -- the large copper cauldrons are fascinating. Also, I notice they don't take the cheese out of the whey completely until they put it in the mold, so it stays warm right until the end.
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Here is a video from the Parmigiano-Reggiano facility and of their process: Parmigiano-Reggiano (http://www.clal.it/index.php?section=video&v=3)
If you have some time watch the rest of the videos on that page as well. They are very interesting in regards to the equipment and the scale at which they are producing their respective cheeses! Very impressive!
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Sorry to keep posting but this is kind of exciting stuff... Here is a PDF of the process, nutritional information and even a flow chart of the process. This is good stuff!
Information about Parmigiano-Reggiano (http://www.clal.it/downloads/schede/DOP%20-%20Parmigiano%20Reggiano%20en.pdf)
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Man Chili you find the most obscure stuff, thanks it's great.
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One thing I failed to see....pressing.
In all of the Italian cheeses mentioned in these videos and articles they never press them.
So...my question has to be..why do we press them?
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I think the pressing comes from the rings and pressure from the edges rather than the top as we are used to.
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I think the pressing comes from the rings and pressure from the edges rather than the top as we are used to.
I don't think it would get the sort of pressure which we are told is necessary to get the wheels they show, from conversations on this forum it would be in hundreds of pounds of pressure.
Yet watching the video they don't even mention pressing of any sort, and those bands wouldn't produce that amount of pressure! Strange?
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I know that there are standards thade define the size and shape, (as well as every other aspect) of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. (and most other cheeses)
I wonder if the radius, and hieght of the wheels create a weight that in effect "self-presses" the curd.
I would imagine that a 50kg wheel, flipped daily, would to some extent, press itself, as long as it is in the hoops.
And that fact, may play into the established sizing standards.
But I am talking out of my butt because I really do not know. Just guessing.
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Wayne you kind of beat me to it... I tend to share your opinion (and source of it for that matter:) ).
I think the shear weight of the wheels tend to do the pressing. While the curd is soft, in some of the pictures you see a fairly thick white follower of some sort on top maybe just to help squeeze it into the mold. Again just my opinion and from the same source as Wayne's :)
I better get to reading my book!
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Hi, I'm H Hoffman - I took the photos/wrote the article. John let me know about the thread here and I thought I should add a bit of information...
After 3 years studying food at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy I have a reasonable knowledge of cheesemaking but probably not much compared to you guys who actually make cheese. I spent a couple of days specifically on Parmigiano-Reggiano with their consortium and then another week with the Grana Padano consortium. This was all a great experience although probably some of you guys would have got even more out of it!
Anyway, one factor which I haven't seen mentioned in your queries on why the cheese doesn't need to be pressed is the issue of the curd size. Both these cheeses have the curd cut really fine - they describe "rice-size" grains. I though there was a picture showing that but when I checked it was not one of the ones I had put up. Here is that...
(http://photos.hhoffman.co.uk/img/v5/p679387185.jpg)
He's showing how the curd pieces can be pressed together - you can see the size of the curd pieces on his right hand.
As far as I recall the finer the curd is cut, the less moisture is retained - so maybe that's why it doesn't need pressing - but I could be wrong as the theory is never easy to learn when you're not applying it.
Let me know if you have any other questions I might be able to answer.
Henry.
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Henry, First off welcome to the board and thanks for the first hand knowledge to go with the photo gallery that we've been drooling over.
Some of your pictures depict a fairly large plastic 'follower' or weight placed on top of the mold do you know if there is any appreciable mass to that? (picture 21 on the Grana Padano gallery) Or is it placed there just to create a more uniform top to the cheese?
If you have any more detailed photos of the process or additional knowledge gained from your experience I'm sure we all would love to hear about it!
Once again welcome and thanks for posting!
Ryan
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Thanks Ryan,
The white disk that goes on top of the mould is a fairly significant piece of teflon, but it's obviously not that heavy...
(http://photos.hhoffman.co.uk/img/v4/p674626514.jpg)
The Grana Padano consortium has a description of the process here... http://www.granapadano.com/ing/product/formatura.htm (http://www.granapadano.com/ing/product/formatura.htm)
I have a total of about 350 photos (including multiple takes, failures, etc) from the various cheese factories. Let me know if there's anything you'd like to see that I might not have covered. It's a few years since I was there so the process is not so fresh in my mind but if anyone has a question I may be able to remember or ask one of my student colleagues.
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Well i am an expert at failure. I for one would LOVE to see some professional failures...
:)
(btw Welcome to the forum, and Kudos CH for attracting some heavy hitters to this forum)
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Interesting in the link you included it does say 'This mould was traditionally made of wood, but today is made of Teflon; it is tightened and pressed by a heavy disk, also in Teflon, so that the whey is drained and the cheese sets in its traditional round shape.'
I wonder how heavy that disk of Teflon is? Obviously that and the tightening of the band itself is the only pressing that occurs.
Great pictures..
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But then as (Carter I think) was saying the sheer weight of these rounds would certainly be pressure. Those curds are certainly small so you wouldn't think that it would require too much pressure for them to knit together?
Thankyou very much Hoffman for your imput, it is certainly much appeciated.
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Henry Welcome and don't listen to Wayne he is an accomplished cheesemaker. All my recipes for Parmesan say at the end of cooking that the curds will be rice-sized too, but as everyone says the weight of these wheels might allow for it's own pressing. But "it is tightened and pressed by a heavy disk, also in Teflon" this might provide the pressure needed, the tightening of the side bands. I make those HDPE followers and HDPE is kind of like Teflon and the 10" x 1" round ones are a good 5 pounds. The ones in the pic are probably 20 pounds easy. Anyway, Henry thank you a lot for the pictures and information. I'm not sure if you're going to stay here but if you do I'm sure we'll all have a ton of questions.
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Anyway, one factor which I haven't seen mentioned in your queries on why the cheese doesn't need to be pressed is the issue of the curd size. Both these cheeses have the curd cut really fine - they describe "rice-size" grains. I though there was a picture showing that but when I checked it was not one of the ones I had put up.
He's showing how the curd pieces can be pressed together - you can see the size of the curd pieces on his right hand.
As far as I recall the finer the curd is cut, the less moisture is retained - so maybe that's why it doesn't need pressing - but I could be wrong as the theory is never easy to learn when you're not applying it.
I am so glad to hear what you have seen in practice. I have said in previous posts that curd preparation was mostly responsible for the way the cheese is formed, not the amount of pressure applied.
So, there is no 'pressing' of Parmesan cheese?
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Ok I nominate Beeman to make a parmesan without any pressing. I was considering do this myself, but I am too used to packing and pressing the cheese into the moulds as I go, and I don't know whether I could resist doing so with the parmesan and just laddle them in.
Michael, who used to post here alot, said that he achieved a "rice curd" using a SS balloon whisk, so getting the curd small enough might take a bit of work, but should be do-able.
So what do you think Beeman? I think this is worth the experiement to find out.
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I wonder whether the curds are chopped up small in the beginning or the end, because as you know I make Parm #6 last week and my autostirrer chopped up everything to rice size right away and that led to really hard curds, with probably very little whey at all. Then again I did cook it for the regular time also expelling whey.
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Carter, with your Brick cheese and small curd however, you pressed it correct? Maybe it didn't need it... we definately need to do some experimenting here!
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True, but it would take a few days probably to compress itself into a dense enough wheel so that it wouldn't fall apart in the brine.
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Carter, with your Brick cheese and small curd however, you pressed it correct? Maybe it didn't need it... we definitely need to do some experimenting here!
I think Tea had a good observation when pointing out that the 'professionals' took the curds out of the pot and straight into the mould, there would be zero cooling. Perhaps the way we remove the curds makes a difference, ie. scooping out with a ladle, slowly or even draining before moulding.
All of the professionals take the curds out the same way, even the Swiss girl up the mountain, and again there is no sign of pressing equipment.
I would take up Tea's challenge, but am still getting my ducks in a row, certainly not up to a Parmesan yet.
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Ok, if Beeman is not able to do this, is any one else willing to step up to the plate?
I really want to know whether this would work or not.
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I have little interest in this particular cheese, but since my wife has asked about 15 times, i feel making this would be a good strategic move. (Thinks about explaining the 100qt ss stockpot i am coveting...)
So, I will do this.
;)
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Wayne!! I can't believe you men at times ... really ;)
Your wife must be easy to get around, as it would take more than 1 cheese for me to make up my mind.
Anyway, if you do end up doing this, there are a couple of things that I would like to see addressed.
Size is always going to be a draw back as we can't turn out 50kg wheels. So I guess 1: as large a batch as you can make (and no that is not an endorsement for the big stockpot).
2: As small as possible with the curd size.
3: Curd poured into the moulds with the whey (so curds are kept warm until the end)
4: Curds divided into two moulds, one to be pressed as usual, and one not to be pressed, only by hand into the mould as seen in the video.
Does anyone else have any requests for the experiement? Am I being too unrealistic?
Your thought please.
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I'll have to re-watch the video, because if they press by hand that still can equal a lot of pressure.
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mmm I hope I didn't get the video's mixed up. One showed then heaving the cheese cloth from the vat directly into a large mould. Then it shows them pressing/pushing the cheese into the mould by hand. I assumed that so much cheese was supposed to fit in there, so it was manhandled and squished in until it all fit in.
Now I am going to have to go back and check.
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Holy Cr*p!! I stopped by the market to get some milk this evening and thought I would check out the cheese cooler to see if anythign changed since the last time I was there... and there it was actual Parmigiano-Reggiano. We are talking in Dickinson, ND here... this is a good find and had to come a long way from Italy!
(http://www.kesabe.com/cheese/parmigiano-reggiano1.jpg)
(http://www.kesabe.com/cheese/parmigiano-reggiano2.jpg)
(http://www.kesabe.com/cheese/parmigiano-reggiano3.jpg)
Wow what a treat!
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How much was it? Here at whole foods it's $21.99 a pound at trader joes it's $15.99 a pound, both Parmesano Reggiano but the trader joes one doesn't taste as good.
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its about 20/lb here in Cleveland.
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Well this was a pretty hot deal all the way up her in god's country. I got this for $18/lb. I just finished my little bedtime snack and I'm thinking this is could get ugly. Weren't one of you alluding to the fact that crack might be a cheaper habbit/hobby? :)
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I've mentioned this before but have any of you had Midnight Moon, a goat cheese, oh my sweet jesus it's good. It still amazes me that a taste like that can come from goat milk, bacteria and salt.period!
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Was reading in Wikipedia about Parmigiano-Reggiano (http://Parmigiano-Reggiano).
"Parmigiano-Reggiano is a hard, fat granular cheese, cooked but not pressed, named after the producing areas of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, Bologna, in Emilia-Romagna, and Mantova, in Lombardy, Italy."
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Last Friday, I went to a cheese tasting at the St. James Cheese Company (http://stjamescheese.com/events.html) here in New Orleans. Featured was Parmigiano Reggiano. They had Giorgio Cravero (http://www.cravero-cheese.it/welcome_eng.lasso), Parmigiano Reggiano ager extrordinaire, in town from Bra, Italy. He says the company is rather small and they produce only three (80 lb) wheels of cheese a day. The wheels are aged 24 - 32 months.
They cut open a wheel at this event, and passed around samples. It was very good, but I was surprised that it was not as hard and dry as I think of parmesan.
I hope I did the links in this post correctly as the link to Giorgio Cravero (he referred to himself at a "maturer") is very interesting.
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Erin, thanks, link works great, pictures of that very special 80 pound monster would be nice :).
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You realize that one wheel represents 1600 USD retail..
Makes you really appreciate this:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Parmigiano_reggiano_factory.jpg)
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WAYNE! I told you in private not to show my cheese cave!! ;D
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After making lots of parmesan I do have to kind of concure, it may not be "pressed" but they do use a weighted follower of, I'm guessing, 10-15 pounds. And my recipes call for only 20 pounds of pressing, but that's at a 4" wheel so for my wheels it's a lot more. Anyway what I concur on it that a lot of the hardness of parmesan comes from the high temp cooking where it releases a lot of whey so the curds go into the mold pretty hard anyway, hard compard to let say a cheddar.
P.S. Excellent links, thanks.
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Erin, thanks, link works great, pictures of that very special 80 pound monster would be nice :).
I didn't take my camera with me to the cheese tasting. I've never been to a cheese tasting before so I didn't know they would be cutting open this 80 lb wheel, much less that such a thing would be a much celebrated event. My husband did take a few pictures with his cellphone. They didn't come out too good but here's the best one. At least the parmigiano reggiano was in focus!
(http://lh6.ggpht.com/_yjLbvF_qaJA/SYSgghWbAzI/AAAAAAAAAXY/x7EhpQ45sMc/s400/parmigiano-reggiano.jpg) (http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/hoEERl_dehyGGooBtja6Nw?authkey=CWnU-HV4zcQ&feat=embedwebsite)
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The picture did not come out for me.. got the red "x".
But i've come to understand why cracking that wheel would be cause for celibration.
Much like a well crafted bottle of wine.
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The picture did not come out for me.. got the red "x".
But i've come to understand why cracking that wheel would be cause for celibration.
Much like a well crafted bottle of wine.
The picture is at this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/hoEERl_dehyGGooBtja6Nw?authkey=CWnU-HV4zcQ&feat=directlink (http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/hoEERl_dehyGGooBtja6Nw?authkey=CWnU-HV4zcQ&feat=directlink)
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Cool pic it looks at though the blurring of the man was on purpose.
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Here is a video from the Parmigiano-Reggiano facility and of their process: Parmigiano-Reggiano ([url]http://www.clal.it/index.php?section=video&v=3[/url])
If you have some time watch the rest of the videos on that page as well. They are very interesting in regards to the equipment and the scale at which they are producing their respective cheeses! Very impressive!
Grandioso! È bella!! (just faking it!)