Eating my "tomme" fresh

[mikekchar]

I finally got everything set up to make rennet cheeses at home (previously only been able to do it at my father's house on the other side of the planet).  I wanted something just to eat now, so figured just to make a queso fresco and after looking around at different recipes, I figured that "queso fresco" must mean "make cheese however I want to and eat it fresh".  I was a bit intrigued by Caldwell's tomme recipe and decided to give it a go (using only 3 litres of milk!)  Interestingly, it does *not* have a curd washing stage. 

• MA 4000
• only ripen for 30 minutes or so (I forget the target pH)
• 3.5 X flocc time for total rennet rest (~45 min in her estimation) @ 32 C
• cut 1cm curds and stir  bringing up to 38 C over 30 minutes
• stir a final 30 minutes
• form into a ball in the whey and transfer to the mould
• let drain into cheese cloth for 15 minutes
• flip and press with 50% weight of the cheese for 30 minute
• flip and press with 100% weight of the cheese for 1 hour
• continue pressing for 4-8 hours (I chose 4, flipping every hour)

Of course things did not got to plan.  My curds were *not* ready to cut after 45 minutes.  Even at 1 hour they were a bit sloppy, but I cut them anyway.  Then my wife phoned from the bus station and asked me to pick her up...  Great timing :-)  20 minutes later, I started stirring, raised the temp for 30 min and held for 30 minutes as per the recipe.  I figured that my pH might be a bit low (I don't have a meter), but given the slow speed of the set, I figured it might be OK (i.e. maybe the milk was buffering a bit anyway).

I balled up the curds (which was much less difficult than I thought it would be).  I put them in the cheese cloth lined mould and... Oh... you know what?  If your follower is *just* the right size for your mould, it is *too big* if you have cheese cloth coming up the side.  Lots of swearing. and then went and sanded off the follower (by hand mind you).  So I got the first flip right.  Then the second flip I did with no weight.  Third flip I finally got the follower the right size, but... Hey... the cheese has formed perfectly well.  How about that?  I just put it in the mould without the cheese cloth.  I have a really basic press which is essentially a big screw.  I screwed it down *very* lightly -- just so that I got some beads of liquid coming out from the mould but no more.  I decided to press it for the 4 hours from there.  After 3 hours the rind looked closed to me, but the cheese felt a bit delicate (I don't know how to explain), so I cranked up the tension a bit higher -- but again no more than having a few beads of whey showing from the mould.

The resultant cheese was 400 grams (from only 3 litres of milk), which surprised me.  I brined it for 3 hours in slightly less than full strength brine (I seem to have discarded my previous brine... or more likely my wife did... and I didn't quite have enough salt.... sigh...)  I dried it overnight and it was quite dry by morning. Had a bite of it around lunch and it was marvelous!  I couldn't believe how good it was.  Interestingly it was completely closed with no mechanical holes.  The texture was very nice and smooth with a good amount of resistance.  It was also very squeaky.  The flavour was surprisingly good (no ageing) and was considerably more acidic than I expected with such a short pressing.

So, as far as I'm concerned, a huge success!  I post a pic tomorrow.  Next to make one to age for a while.  I need to travel for work in the next while so I won't be able to age it as a true tomme, but I'm looking forward to making many of the same thing and seeing how the flavour changes as it ages.

[cheesehead94]

Congratulations, a cheese for you!

In her book Caldwell says something along the lines of "you'll never get every step completely right, but you must at least try to get every step right or you will have some problems"...this is a good example! You did your best, and got an edible cheese.

[awakephd]

Well done, AC4U!

[mikekchar]

Here's a pic:



You can see that it is quite small (4.5" across).  I'm a little bit confused by my yield though.  Caldwell suggests that 1.63 * protein content * fat content ~= yield %.  According to the label, my milk is 3.3% protein and 3.7% fat, for a total of 7% * 1.63 = 11.41%.  Of course that's an estimate, but as I got almost exactly 13.3% it would imply that the protein + fat was on the order of 8%.  That seems a bit unlikely to me.  It seems more likely that I'm retaining a bit too much whey in the curd.  Any ideas?

[mikekchar]

Answering my own question :-)  I realised that I'm approaching the question incorrectly.  What I *want* to achieve is a protein/fat/water composition that is similar to a Tomme de Savoi.  So if the fat content is 3.7g per 100g and 3l of milk weighs 3090 grams (sd of 1.030), then I have a potential of 114.33g of fat in my 397 g cheese (minus losses to whey).  Similarly if the protein content is 3.3g per 100g, then I have a potential of 101.97g of protein (minus losses to whey).  I made 397g of cheese, which means that I had 2693g of whey.  From the USDA nutritional database, sweet whey has 0.85g of protein and 0.36g of fat per 100g of whey.  So that's a total of 22.89g of protein and 9.69 g of fat.  So the theoretical total for my cheese is 79.08g protein and 104.61g fat.  This corresponds to 20% protein and 26.3% fat.

This is pre-ageing and there will be some water loss via ageing.  I'm not sure how much...  I did some googling around and there was a nutritional analysis of a Tomme de Savoi that came in at 25% protein and 30% fat.  If my cheese was 30% fat, then the total weight would have to be 348.7.  This would result in a protein content of 22.7% fat, so one can see that I'm on the high side in fat, which is to be expected I think.  I'm thinking that the 12% moisture loss in ageing is probably not unrealistic, but to get me up to 25% protein I'd have to get down to 316g total which would be a 20% loss in moisture, which is completely unreasonable, I think.

If, I had had a 11.4% yield as predicted by Caldwell, then I would have ended up with 352g of cheese and to get down to 25% protein, I would only need a 10% loss in moisture.  This seems much more reasonable, which means that probably I'm retaining too much moisture in my curds (probably not cutting them small enough).

Ha ha!  I wrote a book there.  Sorry if it's boring, but I enjoy that kind of thinking :-)

[mikekchar]

Well, I made another one today with the same recipe except 4 liters instead of 3.  I tried to be a bit more consistent cutting the curd and I think it had a better curd going into the mould.  But 551g pre-brine and assuming it looses a bit of whey there, I think I'm looking at *exactly* the same yield.  So at least I'm consistent :-)  Things went pretty well today.  I'm quite happy except for the really long flocc time.  I ended up waiting 95 minutes before I cut the curd.  This time it was not sloppy at all and everything went very well.  It will be interesting to compare the resultant cheese.  I'm thinking next time I may use a whisk to cut the curd in order to get it smaller.

[mikekchar]

On Saturday when I was making version 2, my neighbour came over.  He asked me what I was doing and after I said "Making cheese" he mentioned that he wouldn't mind giving it a try.  I told him I wanted to age this one a week, but that I had another one which he could try.  Now, my neighbour is a fairly elderly gentlemen and is very much on the skin-and-bones side.  I think he told me he weighs 55 kg (121 lbs).  I cut him a fairly generous piece since I'm always worried about him eating properly.

"Mike san", he said.  "I can't eat anything as big as that."  Just have a taste, I said.  If you don't like it, I'll finish it off.  He took a bite and thought about it for a bit.  "Hmm... not bad.  Is this the kind of thing you might eat while you are drinking?", he asked.  Japanese people don't generally eat cheese.  Most elderly people have only eaten Kraft cream cheese in their lifetime.  So I said, yes, people frequently eat cheese while drinking.  "That sounds pretty good", he said.

We got to talking and decided he should come over for dinner the next night.  He doesn't really like the concept of dinner.  Night time is for drinking and the food just gets in the way of that (which might explain his slight build).  That's not really a Japanese trait -- it's his peculiarity.  Normally he has a bite or two to be polite, 2 gou of nihonsu (about 360 ml of Japanese sake) and then goes back to his place to sleep.  Anyway, I had just over half the wheel of cheese left (about 200g) so I put that out so he could munch on it with his sake.

Well, long story short, he scarfed the lot!  I managed to wrest a thin slice for myself just to see how the flavour was coming along.  He loved the stuff.  You can imagine how I felt, though, as I was looking at the empty plate.  I *will* need that tomme mould after all!

[mikekchar]

Here's a pic of #2:


You'll notice that the rind isn't quite closed.  I backed off a bit on the pressing weight, but I think it either needs a bit more time or a bit more pressure just to close it off.  #1 had no mechanical holes in it, and I'm trying to get some this time -- we'll see.  I'll be ageing this one for only a week (which is a week more than #1).  As I mentioned earlier, by 1 week in, #1 was surprisingly delicious.  Right off the bat is was very buttery and creamy but by the end of the week the mesophilic culture was starting to impart that cheddar like flavour. Really nice eating cheese, though it won't impress on a cheese platter (far too mild in comparison to the other cheeses).  It will be interesting to see if how #2 develops in the second week.

[rgreenberg2000]

Looks great, Mike, and I enjoyed the story about your neighbor.   Keep finding ways to feed him cheese!

Rich

[mikekchar]

Tomme #2 is 16 days old and I'm going to cut it today (in keeping with my "eat it fresh and learn stuff" approach).  It has considerably more mould on it than I would have expected at this point.  Here's a picture:



Sorry for the poor lighting.  I have Tomme #4 drying in the front room and decided not to move this one into the same area because I want to try a different rind treatment with #4.

I had quite a few problems with #2.  First, I did not dry it off properly before it went into the cave.  Not really being experienced with rennet cheeses, I thought, "Oh this is dry enough" and then when it went through a bit of a slimey phase (which happens most of the time in my cave) I realised the rind wasn't formed well enough.  The other problem was that my ripening box was too small.  I have these "box in box" boxes, where the inner box is really just a plastic grate.  I really like them, but as the cheese slumped a bit, it hit the sides of the inner box.  Also the box was just too small to begin with (I think 700ml for a 500g cheese).  I wondered if I could get away with it and the answer is a definitive "no".  That's why you see all the marks on the sides.  The ones on the top are from the bamboo mat (because the rind wasn't formed properly).

Lot's of learning :-)

I wasn't surprised that blue mold showed up on this cheese.  My cave is full of it.  However, I know from wonderful experience with my non-rennet cheeses that my wild blue is *really* nice (like, "OMG, this is the best cheese I ever ate" nice).  So I decided to just go with the flow.  Interestingly, though, I'm not actually sure this *is* my coveted blue mould.  It doesn't smell like blue mould at all.  It smells like mugwort (an herb that you probably have never heard of before -- in Japanese it is called "yomogi" and it is usually ground and put in sticky, sweet rice cakes).

And then I thought about it.  In the same room where my cave is, my wife is fermenting miso -- the main ingredient being aspergillus oryzae mould (or kooji in Japanese).  I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out.  As you may remember the rind for this one wasn't *quite* closed, so it may be interesting.  Tomme #3 has started to go the same way (although also has some brown mould, which makes me happy).  I'm going to try to age #3 for a month if I can restrain my neighbour :-)

The other thing that might not be noticeable from the picture is the rind is full of geo.  Apart from the marks on the rind, it's gone decidedly wrinkly :-)  There have been occasional "white fuzzy bunny tails" on the rind as well -- not sure if that's a white mould or just the geo.

So as far as I'm concerned, it's all been tremendously fun.  The proof of the pudding is in the eating though.  I'm definitely curious.  My neighbour is coming over to claim his share.  I wonder if he'll eat it :-)  He's a cheese novice so this *might* be a bridge too far...  We'll see.  I have no idea what I'm doing with natural rinds, but I'm enjoying the process.  #4 I plan to get some b.linens going (I know from experience that it show up if I wash the rind regularly).  I'm guessing that will keep the blue/kooji away for a while and then I'll dry it off and see what grows on it.  Hopefully I'll be able to get something to grow before I have to go to the UK in the middle of May.

[cheesehead94]

Nice work!

-you are very fortunate to have some delicious wild blue where you live...I certainly don't!

-it's awesome that your wife makes miso...i love fermenting and have always wanted to try that

-if your neighbor isn't into the mold, just slice of the rind and he should be happy!

[mikekchar]

Thanks cheesehead94!

I thought I'd post this because it gave me a chuckle: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2015096445A1/en There is a patent for using kouji as a surface mold for ripening cheese!  (BTW, US patent office, what the heck???)  I didn't exactly follow the procedures in the patent, so I don't think the thought police will come to arrest me :-)  But if it *is* kouji, then it apparently imparts a very nice flavour.

Edit: Here's another interesting paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220036363_Microencapsulated_enzymes_from_Aspergillus_oryzae_accelerate_cheddar_cheese_ripening_and_enrich_biologically_active_peptide_profile.  The abstract claims that kouji increases proteolisis.  The money quote: "Aspergillus oryzae not only accelerated cheese ripening but has the potential to enrich the bioactive peptide profile in cheddar cheese"

Seriously thinking about intentionally innoculating some cheese with it (kouji is easy to buy in the supermarket here).

[mikekchar]

Well, my neighbour came over.  I showed him the cheese and he said, "Oh that looks great.  How did you make it get that colour?"  Not deterred at all.

Here are some pics from opening it:




Massively successful.  Half the wheel gone in about 10 minutes.  I really need to get a proper tomme mould...  As you can see, there were some mechanical holes which is what I was going for.  The paste is very soft and creamy.  Too soft and creamy for a tomme, I think, but good grief it was good.  Flavour was pretty similar to a havarti really.  So much fat (again, not good for the style, but man it was delicious).

The second picture is a close up of a slice.  Unfortunately it's bit blurry but you might be able to see a slight darkening of the colour near the rind.  There was some softening of the paste there which I attribute to the mould.  It certainly doesn't taste like a blue mould, so I'm sticking with the  kouji theory for now.  I'm a bit worried that the rind won't be stable long term, but I'm going to age #3 for a month (if I can handle the wait... so delicious....)  I dried it out a bit better.  I'm looking forward to getting some b.linens on  #4, though still worried about about the rind.

Anyway, thanks for reading.  Just super excited about how well it turned out!

[cheesehead94]

Awesome, a cheese fornyou!

[awakephd]

Congratulations! Another cheese 4U.