I made a regular make of Brie. I won’t go into too much detail about the make, any Brie make will work for this. For me this batch was basic:
2 ½ gallon raw Nigerian Dwarf goat milk
1/32 tsp PC VB
1/8 tsp Flora Danica
1 skewer tip worth of Geo 13
ripened an hour after adding cultures then added ¼ tsp single strength calf rennet
Watched for flocculation, checked for clean break, cut into ½ inch vertical columns.
Used shallow ladle to scoop curd into forms.
Did not have enough of the best forms. I used some basket-like slightly tapered molds and some Reblochon molds.
At first I thought the Reb molds would be a problem because they don’t have a lot of drainage holes and were draining slowly but in a counter intuitive result they actually lost the most whey because the others dried too fast and trapped whey….at least, that what it seemed like. The well perforated ones shrunk down faster but then stopped while the less drained style kept shrinking in level. I think this may be different when the air is not dry, winter-heated air.
After they drained a while and had firmed up a bit I layered ground shitake mushroom on top of 2 cheeses and layered another cheese on top of each of those to make a 2 layered “cake”. There was still a lot of draining needed….they were still fragile and sopping wet. I hoped they would meld together. I continued to carefully flip them using squares of stiff mesh matting as tops to flip onto. This took some coordination and jiggling of the cheese once it was flipped in order to get it all fully down into the mold. The two layers had still not knit together but this didn’t matter.