Good morning, about a month ago I tried the 30 minutes mozz recipe you can find everywhere. I watched multiple videos ect and felt confident. Got the supplies needed and everything went off perfectly. Got a nice ball of cheese we enjoyed for a couple days in salad ect. This past week I tried to make what my family refers to as "italian basket cheese" for the easter pies. Didn't go so well. Very runny curd as soon as you cut it. Was able to salvage it in some form but nothing I was proud of. Saturday evening I tried to do mozzarella again to enjoy on easter with company and the same thing happened to me again. Decent curd in the pan but as soon as you cut it and started to reheat to start the melting it all broke apart to mush.
I kinda of derived that I mistakenly used tap water instead of a filtered water to mix the rennet in as well as the citric acid. I also read in multiple places to add calcium chloride to the mix before the rennet. I hastily went to the market sunday morning to gather more milk and the pickle crisp to try again, confident that I would succeed with the non chlorinated water and the calcium. Once again, I cut into the curd and the first time I put the spoon into it too mix slow it all feel apart. I have picture and video of that will help I can post them. Any thoughts would be appreciated as I really enjoy the fresh cheese and really hate to fail and not know why. Thanks in advance, Joe.
