Tomme Cheese Making Recipe

[Boofer]

Seems like this is a very hot topic. 7263 views! Is that a thread record?

I've been taking lots of notes. Great discussion.

-Boofer-

[Buck47]

Finding the base line of my cheese cave.

My goal two months ago was to find out what would naturally happen to a Tomme placed in the environment of my cheese cave.

My thinking was that once known I could adjust for different rind treatments.

The Tommes where made from Pav's recipe. Brined as per instructions, air dried for one to two days then placed in the cave at temps that varied from from 50 to 53 degrees at 88 - 93 % RH over a 60 day period.

Rinds where washed every two days , with a salt water solution for the first two weeks, then left to age.

My cave is a converted root cellar 4X9 feet. Ceiling 7 feet. Vented to outside air, two walls limestone, two walls and ceiling cement board, hand toweled with Portland cement. Concrete floor.

The photos below show the results.

So some questions are.

Can someone tell me what molds have developed on these rinds? Are they the type of molds one wants to promote in a cave used to age Tomme?

I have not decided as to what type a rind I want to attain on Tommes.

I do prefer the nut brown color I have seen in photos. My goal is to foster an environment that will naturally produce a basic classic style.

Thanks for your help.  Regards: john

[ArnaudForestier]

Hey John -

Please take my limited experience (heck of a lot more limited than yours) with a grain of salt - but the cheeses look to me to be pretty heavily hit with blue molds, not something I associate with tommes.  I hope I'm wrong.  If I'm right, I don't know that it's entirely a drag, as maybe you'll end up with some interesting tasting cheeses, regardless.  (I don't know enough here, either).

I'll let those who actually know what they're talking about chime in now.

Your cave is incredible, by the way.  You described it to me, but the pics look like you have a ton of fun, in there.

[Buck47]

Hey Bud,

Thanks for your observations. 

A little back ground info: I watched the cheese nun  vid. (about five times) Not that I'm compulsive you understand, but one thing came through very clear. Each cheese making area specializes in make one type cheese. The cows, fields & caves all combine to produce a distinctive taste.  So ... why not where I live?

Could be, I have cave conditions that naturally produce one type cheese better than others. That's really what I want to find out. If it's a Tomme so much the better, it the cave is better suited for another style cheese than that is what I will focus my attentions on. Fact is I can buy all the other kinds of cheese. I'm only a few miles from Wisconsin.

My goal is to focus on what works in this location, and get damn good at it.

A Tomme is an easy make at my beginner skill level, hence I started with this cheese.

Could be Stilton's are the way to go. 

Thanks:  john

BTW: I'm still planning on planting Rye this spring. Should find a use for it somewhere in this cheese making.

[linuxboy]

Agree with Paul, looks like blues to me that you're trying to keep under control.

As for picking the best style of cheese in terms of mold conditions, many caves have had to fight blue molds until they were under control. The notion of putting a cheese in a natural cave and it all working out by itself with no intervention is challenging because that hardly ever happens. Most of the time, through years of practice and selective inoculation, caves stabilize with a natural mix of beneficial molds, yeasts, and bacteria, that contribute to flavor.

[Buck47]

Thanks Pav, that helps put thing into perspective.

It would be nice to cut down on the "years of practice and selective inoculation"

Are there procedures to set up a cave for Tomme style cheese? Some way of seeding the environment in addition to the cheese itself?

I can keep the temp and RH within a close range. Thats not a problem. Only have about 45 days in the summer temps climb to the 59 - 61 degree range. The rest of the year is stable.

Possibly sterilizing the cave by washing, then spraying the walls with beneficial molds? I would think this has been done before. 

To me, producing a quality Tomme would be a goal worth attaining.

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Regards: john

[linuxboy]

It's really delicate unless you're dealing with volume or large thermal wells and sinks. Why? Because:

- You need to maintain temp. If you use a cooler to maintain temp, you have to slow that air down. If you don't slow the air down, it will kill off the spores due to wrong air currents.
- You need to maintain humidity, so for all that moving air, it needs to be "wet". And if you just mist and add moisture, again, it will create fluctuations in the cave conditions, making it tough to maintain stable colonies

What I would do is:

-Sanitize the heck out of an existing cave. Kill everything. Bleach it, wash with acid (phosphoric, paracetic, citric, even acetic if that's all you have), bleach again, then rinse with water.
- Paint with lime to prevent various unwanted molds from taking place.
- Either introduce isolated indigenous cultures (take some petri dishes, get an all purpose agar blend, and set it out in the open and see what grows, then propagate forward), or use commercial cultures.
- The way you introduce it is straightforward. You splash whey on all surfaces to give a food film for bacteria, let it dry some. Then you make up multiple cultures, either in one bucket, or multiple buckets. And then spray or splash it over the whey. It should all get a foothold.
- Then you load up the cave with cheese, and let all the cultures do their thing. Pick your cultures carefully. You will want a blend of b linens, geotrichum, candidum, yeasts (DH, KL), mycodore, mycoderm, and/or various indigenous cultures (pick them by smell and taste).

Basically, bomb it to sterilize, then before anything get in there to grow, saturate the entire space with the strains you want. As long as you keep rotating cheeses in and out, you should be fine. Using wood shelves helps, too.

[Buck47]

Pav:  This sounds like a lot of fun. This is all doable, one problem I see is the part about loading the cave with cheese and rotation in and out of new cheese.

I'm only one guy, I make cheese for myself, and I'm working with an area of 4X8X7 or 224 cubic feet. I have visions of prepping this cave and proudly walking in with one four pound cheese setting it down and closing the door. I only have time to make two or three four pound cheese in a week.

It would take me a year to fill this space. Yikes !!! 

Would the low volume of cheese be a problem or is there a work around to keep the various cultures active and predominate?

Interesting in that the walls of this basement where all wash coated with lime years ago. The room is naturally cooled as it is built against two outside walls (24 inched thick limestone.) The two new walls I built have six inch insulation and a commercial walk-in cooler door (from a meat cooler) is used for access. 

Has two 3 inch vents for air circulation. Most of the time the walls have a bit of moisture on them. Never completely dry.

Could it be the size of the room is problematic as I don't see a time where it will ever be filled with more that 20 - 30 cheese at any one time.

Regards: john

[linuxboy]

Would the low volume of cheese be a problem or is there a work around to keep the various cultures active and predominate?

Yes, it is a slight problem. The point of saturating a cave is just that, to saturate it and keep those colonies going. To keep the colonies going, they need fresh food. Otherwise, they'll go dormant and other opportunistic molds will outcompete. But, there are a few things you can do

1) Keep inoculating each cheese and keep washing to ensure good growth. If you make cheese 1x/week and keep washing, even though there may not be a huge buildup in the air and the environment, your cheeses should be fine because you're babying them, and because you sanitized the cave, eliminating old flora.

2) Keep something other than cheese in there as food for the species. For example, get a flake of hay (or straw), steam or boil it, then dump it into a bucket full of inoculant, and then take that hay out and put it in one corner of the cave. Everything will start growing on it. If it gets too smelly, go put it in the compost bin and start again. It's not optimal, but it's a decent cheat to keep all those lovely molds, yeasts, and bacteria going

What you're trying to do is

- Maintain humidity
- Renew the food source for the flora
- Maintain temp
- Ensure air is exchanged

If your cave lacks any of these, you have to finaggle and engineer strategies to make up for the less-than-ideal conditions. This part is more art than science, constant balancing act.

The good part is that if you can pull it off, you will have achieved one of the most challenging aspects of small-scale cheese production - mimicking natural conditions synthetically for rind formation. Don't be discouraged if something doesn't work. This is not easy, but fun to try and accomplish.

Also, try to do a better job on eliminating creases/poor knit on the rind because it will improve cheese and rind quality. I posted a good trick for how to do this in one of Paul's threads.

[ArnaudForestier]

This is a fascinating discussion.  John, I'm sorry about the blue infestation, but wanted to wish you well on dealing with it.  Pav, thanks for the contributions, as usual.  Lots to think about when planning for a more expansive cave.

[Buck47]

I agree, I find this discussion fascinating also. Real meat & potatoes kind of stuff.

"What you're trying to do is

- Maintain humidity
- Renew the food source for the flora
- Maintain temp
- Ensure air is exchanged"

I like the idea of using the materials I'm surrounded by. Cleaning with a caustic, lime coated walls, hay from the fields, as well as milk produced from local pastures. 

I'll need some help and guidance in the

"Either introduce isolated indigenous cultures (take some petri dishes, get an all purpose agar blend, and set it out in the open and see what grows, then propagate forward), or use commercial cultures.
- The way you introduce it is straightforward. You splash whey on all surfaces to give a food film for bacteria, let it dry some. Then you make up multiple cultures, either in one bucket, or multiple buckets. And then spray or splash it over the whey. It should all get a foothold."

Bottom line this is all very basic steps.  The art form will come with analyzing and learning how to balance the variable.  But with computers able to transfer photos, and good record keeping - it should work.

And like Pav says:

"The good part is that if you can pull it off, you will have achieved one of the most challenging aspects of small-scale cheese production - mimicking natural conditions synthetically for rind formation. Don't be discouraged if something doesn't work. This is not easy, but fun to try and accomplish."

This is the kind of thing I thrive on. I find it more fun than the make itself.

I'm optimistic.

As to the "Blue Infestation" Aaaaa! That's no hill for a climber. 

Fact is - this is just what I was hoping to find out. I now have a baseline to work from. And thanks to Pav, a clear direction as to what needs to be done.

I'm a happy camper!

I wonder if my dog likes cheese with blue mold?

Regards: john

[Buck47]

What I would do is:

-Sanitize the heck out of an existing cave. Kill everything. Bleach it, wash with acid (phosphoric, paracetic, citric, even acetic if that's all you have), bleach again, then rinse with water.
- Paint with lime to prevent various unwanted molds from taking place.

Question Pav:

Can I use the type of acid used in milk parlors? Then bleach (diluted two ounce per gallon water) followed by a fresh water rinse.

Am I correct, your talking Hydrated Mason Lime, mixed as a slurry and brushed on the walls & ceiling?

Thanks: john

[linuxboy]

Can I use the type of acid used in milk parlors?

Yes, strong acid works well.

Then bleach (diluted two ounce per gallon water) followed by a fresh water rinse.

Seems fine, don't forget to get a stiff brush and scrub everything. Lots of crevices everywhere.

Yes, mason lime, the white stuff. Not the crushed ag lime. We used salt, alum, and mason lime for wash. It's been a white, but I think it's 4-5 parts lime, 1 part salt, and a little alum? There has to be something on the Internet about making whitewash. It will get hot and paint on thin, this is fine. You will need to recoat walls from time to time.

[Buck47]

It's been sometime since I last made white wash. Perportions about the same as yours. I would place two gallon water in plastic 5 gal container, three full coffee cans of lime & 1/2 coffee can of salt. I remember it would heat up. Mixed it in the morning let sit and used in the afternoon. Never used alum in white wash mix. Not sure where I would get it.

Fact is the only alum I know is the kind I use as an astringent / or coagulant after shaving. (a neat trick is to wet your fingers on a alum block, helps pull the skin tight) More important the older ya get. 

[ArnaudForestier]

I just wanted to say how grateful I am to Pav for his help here, in the recipe, in the continuing generosity in helping newbies like myself.  My first tomme, I thought, was a complete waste, but a learning experience to go with for the next several months.  I've got 3 going, and, inspired to taste this first "sacrificial" wheel monthly, my family and I tried the wheel after roughly 5 weeks.

We are, all of us, pleased.  The paste was not crumbly, as I would have thought (given the precipitous drop in and low pH of the wheel that I experienced, or thought I experienced, given the meter's reading), but creamy, wonderfully rich and - I'm really surprised by this - complex in flavor; salty, just a bit, for my taste, but my wife thought it was spot on.  Whiff of good mold, but again this is at 5 weeks and I expect all of this to come together in a more balanced way over the next two months. 

Thank you again, Pav.  This has been a fantastic journey, in a short several weeks.

Paul