John's Cheese #055 - Chocolate American Neufchâtel #1

[sstrantz]

Okay...if I try the "chocolate milk cheese" that originally started this topic, but started out with raw milk to which I've added my own chocolate flavoring (which would also include sugar), will there be any issues with "bad" bacteria growth?  I'm wondering about the sugar added to the process.  I've made plenty of lactic-type cheeses (sometimes adding just a touch of rennet depending on the circumstances) with raw milk, but never one with additional ingredients and sugar being added in.

I'm hoping this will work because this sounds SOOOOO GOOOOD!!!!

[Cheese Head]

Sue here's one thread on adding sugar when making Cream Cheese and here's one on using sugar when making yogurt.

[Tomer1]

Wow that is awesome, you could make a hit cheese and sell the formula for milions
(or get a milion companies trying to clone your cheese).

You got to bring one of thos and let me in on a trio sit down (or maybe a quatro,Alex's wife...)
Wine and bread (and cheese if you dare...) is on me.

[iratherfly]

Sailor -thanks! It was (and still is) difficult to make. The goal is to technically make it a flawless process.

John - yes, the sugar is only half the issue. You need to use bacterium and mold that do not prefer glucose to lactose so that they won't attack the sugar in the chocolate while not affecting the cheese properly.  The other half of the issue is well... lack of salt. Obviously I can't salt this cheese if I want it to be a rich sweet desert and that affects everything, from the paste texture and pH levels to maturation and phage control, to the fact that some bacterium is apparently chocoholic and really tries to ferment the chocolate... I still have about 8-9 different experimental batches in the pipeline to test different cultures and techniques and find the best practice but this one is difficult. I got the texture and aroma quite right. The rind can use slight adjustment and I think I have a solution (I have to test it and see if it works). The flavor still needs work because the ripening bacteria does some lipolysis to the chocolate. I am switching ripening cultures and chocolate types to find-tune it until I get the right combo. This could take a long time and I have to stress that it's not cheap when a quality chocolate is involved (and unfortunately, just as we don't buy crappy milk to use for cheesemaking, same rule goes for chocolates. Hershey's is not going to do it).

Tomer -you bet!  Have you spoken to Alex lately? Haven't seen him on the forum for a while but I hear he is teaching cheesemaking courses. I've had his cheese and his wife's bread in a previous visit to Israel. Good stuff! It's funny how you, him and my parents home where I stay when I go to Israel are all minutes from one another...

[smilingcalico]

Nice to finally see that cheese, Iratherfly, I remember you mentioning it some many months ago.  What a concept!

[Tomer1]

"It's funny how you, him and my parents home where I stay when I go to Israel are all minutes from one another..."
Dont you know?  Haifa is the cullinery city of israel, people come to live here simply for the food.
Otherwise I have no idea why they stay.

[iratherfly]

Thanks smilingcalico!

Tomer, you are too much   Haifa is closer the the Galilee so it makes sense. I guess it's Israel's version of Lyon.  Only foodies know that it's the culinary capital of France, not Paris. (Sorry, I just couldn't compare Paris to Tel Aviv, that's like comparing a painter to a software engineer)

[Tomer1]

Paris is wonderful , telaviv is just mayham and alot of filth.
so... im not a fan of it far too noisy for my taste, I'm a country guy at heart.
Gone settle in the galile with some goats,a few cows and a dog sometime in my future.
Im starting school again to get a degree in mech. engineering. so its gone be a minimum of 4 years.

IMO with the whole thing happening with tnuva and the big dairy companies people are DYING for localy made cheeses and will pay an extra ,just not to serve the giant evils.

[iratherfly]

I wouldn't go that hard on Tel Aviv. New York is dirty and mayhem, Tel Aviv has amazing restaurant, interesting people, modern architecture (and don't forget it's a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its Bauhaus architecture) and very progressive infrastructure. Lots of art, beach life, technology startup concentration that is only secondary to Silicon Valley and very diverse population, including peaceful living of Arabs and Jews together in Jaffa. The metropolitan area has population larger than Frankfurt, Budapest, Amsterdam, Lisbon, Munich, Pittsburgh, Vienna, Portland, Denver, Lyon, or Vancouver I wouldn't knock it down.

I agree about the state of Israeli big-dairy. I think that in 10-year's time Israel would go through the same cheese revolution as its wine industry went through about 15 years ago. It has the perfect conditions.