Ok, just as a follow up to the posting I had before, I looked at things, and there seems to be a lot of talk about "flocculation" and "multiplier times" in controlling the quality of the cheese, in terms of dryness, and moisture of the cheese. So, this past weekend, when I made mozzarella again, I changed that. I was getting a good curd after 10 mins before, so I would cut the curd then to save time. This time I waited 30mins, since people seem to say that longer times setting the curd will result in more moisture, and a softer cheese. Also I was cutting the curd rather randomly at 1/2inch or so cubes. This time I carefully cut at 1inch cubes, since people seem to say larger cubes of curd will also result in a moister softer cheese.
This seemed to result in a much higher yield, with more curd produced to be drained, like twice as much. But then I put the curd into a double boiler for heating and stretching, and the curd expressed a lot more whey then it had before, so not sure that it helped or not. It seemed to take longer to get the curd to stretch also, but it got there, and I got a good ball of mozzarella, that tasted good. Not sure, but maybe in the end, I did get a higher yield, it seemed to be more than a pound, but if so, it was a slight change, like 20% more cheese from the gallon.
So, then I made pizza with it last night, and in the end, no real difference. The cheese tastes good on the pizza, but it still doesn't melt all that much. Just a little, before it browns, so no gooey melted cheese experience for the kids yet.
So, I'll stick with the success that I do have. Next to try I guess is to mess with the fat content. Maybe going for 2% milk, or adding a cup of cream to see how that effects things. Plus I need to try with the "good" milk now, the $3.50 "normal" pasturized homogenized milk is working for me, now try the $8 local grass fed non-homogenized milk, and see how that goes. (I'm putting off trying the $18 local raw milk for awhile yet...)
(Also I try making ricotta from the whey each time, and this time, very little ricotta, like only 1-2oz from the gallon. I might stop doing that, since it is about another whole hour heating and cooling the milk for such a low yield, I usually got 3-4oz. But having one spoonful of ricotta in the middle of each slice of pizza is kinda nice, so not sure yet...)