Photo essay - camembert AKA "malembert" AKA "camembrie"

[awakephd]

It has been quite a while since I posted a set of photos demonstrating a make of cheese, but over the past few months there have been several questions about making camembert. I decided to document my latest make - which I actually made a month ago, but just now am getting the chance to organize the pictures and make the post. Fortunately, the delay in getting it posted means we are only 2-3 weeks from when the cheese should be ready, so it won't be as long until I can follow up with pictures of the results.

First set of pictures illustrates the setup that I do:

• Put utensils in the cheese pot with a couple of inches of filtered water, put on the lid, and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, heat up another smaller pot of filtered water; this will be used throughout the make to re-sterilize utensils after they have been used.
• Use dilute bleach to clean the counter next to the stove, then cover with a clean dish towel.
• While the utensils are sterilizing, put the jugs of milk in the sink and fill with hot water to preheat. The exact temperature rise will of course depend on how many jugs of milk, how much time, and how hot the water is. With my hot water, set at 120°F / 49°C, 4 jugs of milk generally reach around 80°F / 27°C during the time I am sterilizing; 2 jugs generally reach 90°F / 32°C, which is my target for this recipe.
• Also while the utensils are sterilizing and the milk is preheating, prepare water for diluting the rennet and for making a calcium chloride solution. I do this by putting 1/4 cup or so of filtered water into small cups and putting them in the microwave for a couple of minutes to bring to a boil.
• Rather than buying (expensive) bottles of CaCl solution, I make my own using "Pickle Crisp" - which is simply CaCl in crystal form. Since the bottled solutions are around 33%, I use 1/3 as much of the crystals as the amount of CaCl solution called for. As soon as the cups come out of the microwave, I put the measured crystals into one of them to let them dissolve. Both cups (carefully distinguished as to which is which!) go into the fridge to start cooling.
• The utensils are sterilized and laid out on the dish towel (forgot to get a picture of that). The pre-heated milk has been put into the pot along with my cheese thermometer. If any additional heat is needed, I apply direct heat (setting 4 on my stove) - with a heavy pot, occasional stirring, and low heat, I find this gives me very precise control. As can be seen on the thermometer, this time - with the extra time involved in taking pictures - the preheat in the sink was almost too much - I hit 91°F / 33°C with the preheating - still okay, and since there is no cooking of the curds, I will not need to use the stove at all for this make; the thermal mass of the milk will maintain the temperature within an acceptable range.

[awakephd]

So I called this camembert AKA "malembert" AKA "camembrie" - say what??

If you do a search on the forum for "malembert," you will find several posts from OzzieCheese (Mal), with his recipe for camembert. I am using a slightly modified form of that recipe. However, I don't have enough molds of the right size for true camembert, nor do I have a mold for brie. So I make something that is in-between in size - thus, "camembrie."

Ingredients:

• 2 gallons whole milk - unfortunately, all I have to work with is store-bought P&H. Fortunately, I find that the cheapest brand works as well or better than any other
• 1 pint heavy cream - unfortunately, all I have access to is ultra-pasteurized with carrageen added - yuck. But it works okay in this recipe
• 1/4 tsp Flora Danica
• scant 1/16 tsp MA011 (optional)
• 1/32 tsp PC
• 1/64 tsp Geo
• 1/8 tsp CaCl crystals, diluted in ~1/4 cup of boiled, filtered water
• 1/2 tsp single-strength liquid rennet, diluted in ~1/4 cup of boiled, filtered water
• 4.5 tsp coarse (Kosher) salt

And here is the make, part 1, illustrated by the pictures:

• Milk, cream, and CaCl solution are added to the pot and brought to 90°F / 32°C. (As noted in the previous post, this time all the heating was done with the jugs of milk in the sink.)
• Get the cultures out of the freezer - in the picture you can see the specific type of PC (ABL) and Geo (13) that I use.
• Sprinkle the cultures on the milk and allow to hydrate for ~5 minutes, then stir in.
• Cover the milk and allow to sit, undisturbed, for 60 minutes.
• Any utensils that have been used which will need to be used again later go into the smaller pot of near-boiling water to re-sanitize. Periodically it will be necessary to add some more water to this pot.
• Forgot to take a picture of this step: Add the rennet to the water to dilute, then stir the diluted rennet into the milk for ~1 minute. Cover the pot and allow the milk to sit undisturbed for another 60 minutes - yes, a very long flocc time, and using approximately twice as much rennet as I usually do for other makes - this is a high moisture cheese!
• Cut the curd vertically into approximately 1" / 25mm squares. I use my mondo frosting knife as my curd knife.
• Using my home-made horizontal curd cutting tool, cut the squares into 1" / 25mm cubes.
• Allow the cut curds to rest for 5-10 minutes.

[awakephd]

I ended the previous post with the curds cut and resting for 15 minutes. Here is the rest of the make, again illustrated by the pictures below. Warning: much of this is NOT the traditional way to do camembert, but rather reflects the equipment and molds I have available:

• While the curds are resting, transfer the already near-boiling water out of the small pot into a larger pot, put in the butter muslin, molds, and plastic mats, and bring to a boil.
• Cover this pot with the colander that will be used for straining so that the steam will sterilize the colander. If the colander is particularly large, as mine is, periodically rotate a different section of the colander over the steam. Continue doing this during the stirring phase below.
• After the curds have rested, begin very gentle stirring of curds, stirring for a total of 15 minutes. Because the store bought P&H milk produces such fragile curds, I start out by "jiggling" and "swirling" the pot for the first 5 minutes or so. Even this begins to fracture these fragile curds.
• Once I switch to the curd ladle, I have to stir very, very gently, and not continuously -- and even then the final result is quite fractured. Oh, for a source of raw milk ....
  
• After a total of 15 minutes of jiggling/swirling/stirring, allow the curds to rest for 15 minutes; during this time the whey will rise to the top.
• Forgot to take a picture of this part: While the curds are resting, remove the molds, butter muslin, and plastic mats from the pot. Set the colander in the sink. (I set it on three coffee mugs for stability). I handle the cloth with tongs at first, squeezing out as much of the boiling water as I can with the tongs and then spreading it out on the colander to cool.
• Once the butter muslin is cool enough to handle, squeeze out any remaining water and spread it out to line the colander; this will be used to drain the curds. This is not traditional - usually the curds are drained in the molds - but my molds are not large enough to do that, so I have to drain first in the colander.
• Drain the curds in the colander for ~5 minutes, until the volume is reduced enough to fit into the molds. (Again, in a traditional recipe, you would ladle the curds straight into the molds and let them drain there.)
• Set the molds in a plastic tray, on top of some plastic "egg crate." (The tray and "egg crate" are too large to sterilize in a pot, so they have been run through the dishwasher.) Ladle the partially drained curds into the molds - even partially drained, there is still a lot of whey in these curds, so it may have to be mounded up to fit.
• After about 30 minutes, drain the accumulated whey out of the tray, then turn the molds over, using plastic mesh to cover and contain the curds.
• Let rest / drain another 30 minutes, again drain the accumulated whey, then turn the molds over again. Note how much they have shrunk just in this first hour - but they will still drain and shrink quite a bit more! Continue to flip every 30 minutes or so another few times - for me, this depends on how late I want to stay up :). Cover the molds with a clean piece of butter muslin and let them rest / drain / continue to acidify for another 12-24 hours.

[awakephd]

At the end of the previous post, the curds were in the molds, having been flipped several times, covered, and allowed to drain and acidify for 12-24 hours (I usually do 24 hours). After the curds have been draining and acidifying for up to 24 hours, the pH should have bottomed out at around 4.6 or so - but I no longer bother to check it, since after this much time it will have gone as low as it is going to go! So I move on to the salting and affinage of the cheese:

• Preparing to salt the cheese using a coarse, non-iodized salt. (I use kosher salt - a whole lot cheaper than the special cheese salt, and works just fine for me.) Note how much more the cheese has shrunk as it has continued to drain.
• With the recipe I have given above, using 3 molds of approximately 5.5-6" (140-150mm) diameter, the right amount of salt seems to be 3/4 tsp per side. Leaving the cheese in the molds, I measure out the salt onto the top of each cheese ...
• ... then use my finger to spread the salt evenly over the top ...
• ... so that there is an even coating of salt on the top of the cheese. I cover the cheese with butter muslin and leave it for another 12 hours or so to absorb the salt.
• After 12 hours or so, I flip the cheese over and salt the other side. You can do this still using the molds, at room temperature, but I generally go ahead and put each cheese into a "ripening box" - a cheap plastic container, with some plastic eggcrate topped by plastic mesh in the bottom. I turn the cheese over and put it into the ripening box, then measure out 3/4 tsp onto what is now the top of each cheese (what was the bottom in the previous step, since I just flipped it), and again spread it out to an even coating. These ripening boxes, with the lid set on top but not sealed, go into my cheese cave.
• Once a day, take the ripening boxes out, wipe out out any accumulated moisture (I use paper towels), and flip the cheese over. Within 1-3 days, you should see and/or feel geo forming - a creamy/yellow color and a slimy feel. In this picture you can see it in the crevice at the edge.
• Within a week, you should see the fuzzy white PC forming. Ideally you should pat this down and flip the cheese daily, until the entire surface of the cheese is coated with PC. However, sometimes life gets in the way, or you have to travel, and the cheese is neglected for a few days ... and you come home to what is shown in this picture, PC-rampage! Never fear - it will still be okay ...
• ... although it may take some care to peel the plastic mat loose from the overgrown PC on the bottom!
• It may tear a little (as you can see on the upper right edge), but with with some care, the mat will come loose. None of this would have been a problem if I had been able to flip the cheese daily, patting down the PC each time. But even though the surface now looks like a checkerboard and has a small tear, it will merge together as the PC continues its work. Fortunately, this cheese is more resilient than one might think!
• Once the cheese is well covered with PC, I prefer to do a slower aging in the kitchen (cold) refrigerator. This can be done still in the same ripening boxes, again flipping and wiping out any moisture every day or every other day or so, but I find it much easier to wrap each cheese in a square of the special ripening paper that allows the cheese to breathe while maintaining the moisture.
• Once wrapped, and secured with a bit of tape, these can go into the kitchen refrigerator. I stack them so that they have some room for air underneath, and flip them over every few days - they don't need to be flipped as often when in the paper, since there is no mat for the PC to grow into!

At this point, the cheese feels somewhat firm - not hard, but definitely not squishy. After about 5 weeks, they will just start to feel squishy on the edges, but they are not done yet. After 6-7 weeks, they feel somewhat squishy in the middle and pretty squishy on the edges - this is when I like to start eating them. I'm 2-3 weeks away from that point with this batch ... but when they get there, I will take pictures and update this thread.

I hope this photo essay will be helpful to others who are starting out with camembert - even though much of this is customized for my equipment and molds and such. If you found this helpful, I highly recommend searching for one of OzzieCheese's "malembert" posts; this will give you more or less the same recipe, but using the traditional size molds, and therefore following a more traditional procedure in the make. Between his makes and mine, hopefully you will see a way to use the equipment you have on hand to make this marvelous cheese.

[Duntov]

Great write up!

[awakephd]

Thanks!

[mikekchar]

Awesome!  Thanks :-)  I will be making camembert once it gets around to fall time (November time frame)...  It's a bit hot now, but looking forward to it!

[Susan38]

Well done!  If I ever make camembert I will be sure to be looking at this post beforehand!  This must have taken quite a bit of your time to compile, deserving a cheese for that, as well as for the detail-oriented steps that everyone can follow.

A related question...you say you cut the curd with a frosting knife, then in the next step you say you use a "homemade vertical curd cutter"...are you meaning a horizontal curd cutter?  And is the picture of it on IMG 6463?  I also see part of it in your sanitization pans, but would like to see the whole thing if possible (or have you already posted a pic of it in the Equipment board?  if so I will look there).

Looking forward to the followup when the process is complete!

[awakephd]

Hi Susan,

You are correct - the mondo frosting knife is for making the vertical cuts, and the homemade cutter is for making horizontal cuts - I'll go back and correct that. And yes, IMG6463 is a picture of that homemade cutter.

I developed this design a few years ago, and described it as part of a write-up on a swiss make: https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,13485.0.html. I also made a fancy version of this cutter for a friend, and put together a YouTube video so that he could see how to use it. The first two or three minutes of the video explains the basic concept in detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBDTISb9sR4. Though the fancy one was fun to make, I am still using my first version, the one shown in the swiss make link above. Nothing fancy, but it still works a treat!

Let me know if you have any questions!

[Susan38]

Thanks for the info and especially the links; you saved me a lot of time searching the forum.  I like this style better than a "harp", now I just need to make one.

[mikekchar]

Oh wow!  That's super cool and probably within my ability to make.  As soon as I get home (at the MIL's) I'm going to make one.

[awakephd]

If you want to try out the idea in a super simple way, in the thread where I discuss the swiss make and show the cutter, I included a link to the inspiration for my design. If I remember correctly, that original design was ultra-simple, just using a dowel rod with 1" markings inked on it, with indexing done by hand and eye, rather than with a mechanical stop as in my design.

[awakephd]

Brief update - the cams still have about a week to go to be at the optimum stage ... but I often open one a bit early. Pictures are below - at this point, the interior is still very crumbly, while the outside is very creamy. I really like eating one at this stage - a lovely combination of flavor and texture.

In another week, it will be creamy most of the way through, with maybe still a little crumbly in the very middle - this is, for me, the optimum stage. I will post a couple of pictures of what it looks like at that point in another week or so. Meanwhile, I'm off to enjoy some "young malembrie." :)

[TravisNTexas]

Fantastic writeup Andy, and very much appreciated!  AC4U

[awakephd]

Thanks!