Parma Koji V1 Trial, Pt. 1
Was going to make jack yesterday, but only one of my two gallons of milk were still good, so I figured I'd get going on my attempts at using a koji-accelerated parmesan. Mainly going off the NECMS recipe, with some cross-referencing to the curd-nerd recipe and some educated guesses based on Koji Alchemy.
First off, I used the powers of sorcery and having exactly the right amount of instant skim lying around to turn 1 gallon of whole milk into 2 gallons of 2% milk. I slowly heated it in my pot to about 140, and set a bowl of approximately this'll probably work dried koji and I guess this is enough blood temperature filtered water in a large covered bowl to soak.
After about an hour of sterilizing and soaking, stirring every 20 minutes, I added calcium chloride and switched off the burner. Once the milk was under 130 throughout, I added the excess soaking water and set the koji in a bag to steep like a fungal tea. 131 is the high end of the optimum temperature for koji's protease activity, so I wanted to take advantage of that before curdling. The lipases, meanwhile, won't really get going until room temperature.
At 110, I added in 3 cubes of thermophilic mother, cultivated from a vegan yogurt listing S. Thermophilus, L. Bulgaricus, L. Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Lactis, and L. Plantarum and once they had melted set it on lowest heat on the small burner for about half an hour.
Once the pre-ripening was done, I fished out the koji, wrung it out, and added in a dissolved 3/4 of a tablet worth of my vegetable rennet and set my timer for 35 minutes.
While the cheese set, I mixed my steeped koji with the remainder of my 400g dry koji packet in a gallon ziploc bag and added enough water that it was all noticeably wet.
Once the timer went off, I cut the curd into inch chunks with my cake knife, then, since they seemed fairly soft, I let it set for another 15 minutes, and cut it again a half inch offset, and let it sit for another 15 minutes. I did one last cut with my whisk, slowly and carefully going up and down, to get the curds into a... relatively even, though frayed, collection of chunks, and let it have one final 10 minute rest.
After that, most of the curd had sunk beneath the whey and a quick pH dip measured the acidity at around 5.5. I set the stove to gradually warm it., stirring occasionally with the whisk.
Once the temperature got back to 110, I raised the burner a notch and checked with a pH strip again; 5.0.
I reached 130 after raising the heat gradually and stirring more and more often, and finally, once the average temperature had it it, I quickly removed all the curd to a mold, which I then checked the drainage of before adding a can of tomatoes on top of to get the whey trickling.
I continued to add weight as the whey would slow down, until I ended up with a veritable Jenga tower of weight. I'd guesstimate the final pressing weight was somewhere around 50-80 lbs. Hopefully enough to consolidate the curd despite the acidity. I ended up shooting for 4 hours total, though I may have ended up short due to how late it was by that time. The pressed cheese was somewhat thin and floppy, but held together strongly enough that I didn't worry about breaking it when I flipped it. I'll certainly need to find a bigger pot if I ever want to make a respectably sized parmesan.
Weighing my wet koji, I got a total of 755 grams. Since I started with 400 grams, at most 355 grams of it is water. To get a slightly better hydration, I measured out 124 grams of pickling salt and added it to the koji, and washed it down with 118 grams more filtered water to reach a saturation of around 26%. After squishing it around in its bag for a while, I set it out at room temperature to digest. While standard shio koji takes around a week to be ready, I believe that's mostly just amylase reacting, and 'sweet' isn't really the flavor profile I'm looking for here. This should be ready to use as a brine base when the cheese is ready to brine in a few days (as per the NECMS recipe and the PR PDO standards).
The sheer amount of weight led to me not turning the cheese during pressing, which may be a mistake, but I did turn the cheese and remove the cheesecloth after I removed the weight for the night.
Oh, and because of how much acid whey I ended up with, I mixed in some baking soda and made it into ricotta. Low yield, but better than nothing.