Curds Breaking Apart

[CurdNerd]

Hi All,

I'm relatively new to cheese making and I'm struggling a bit. I am having more failures than successes and there doesn't seem to be anything I can pinpoint as to what is going wrong or why.

In particular, i wanted to describe what happened today when trying to make some Mozzarella.

I sterilise with Iodophor. 10 litres of water with 10 ml of Iodophor. Anything that touches the milk or the equipment gets a 2 minute soak. Kitchen benches all wiped down with it as well. Also, I use a digital thermometer for very accurate measurements.

I had 4 litres of un-homogenised milk that had a use by date of 15/8/15, so it had 7 days until the use by date. That to me, seems like it must be pretty fresh.

Also, all the bottles of milk I got today had a 1.5cm thick layer of cream on the top of the bottle. I needed to shake the bottles quite vigorously to get the cream to dislodge from the inside top of the container and break it up a bit. When the milk was poured out, I spent quite a bit of time breaking up the cream and getting it to dissolve as much as possible back into the milk before I added anything into it or heating it. Often, when I buy this type of milk, it has some cream on the top, but this lot had a particularly heavy amount at the top.

Next I added 2 ml of calcium chloride and 1/4 of a cup of cool, un-chlorinated water that had two teaspoons of citric acid dissolved in it and gave the milk a good stir for at least a minute. Then I started to slowly heat the milk to 32 degrees, stirring the whole time.

As soon as the milk reached 32 degrees, I took it off the heat and added the rennet. I use tablets. I had dissolved two tablets in 1/4 of a cup of cool, un-chlorinated water. The rennet tablets are also well within their use by dates and the blister pack was not damaged in any way, so I know the tablets are ok.

After adding the rennet, I stirred the milk for a good minute and half, to ensure the rennet was evenly distributed. I put a lid on the pot and let it sit for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes I checked the curd and it gave a beautiful nice clean break.

I cut the curds with my curd knife into 1 inch size cubes (cutting across and through).

Then I put the pot back on the hotplate and started to heat the curd to 42 degrees and began to gently stir. As soon as I started to stir, the curds broke apart and I ended up with the whey being full of flecks of broken curds.

It was heartbreaking.

I went and got more milk and tried again and got exactly the same result.

I guess, some questions that come to my mind:

Should I have not shaken the bottles as much as I did to try and break up the cream and dissolve it back into the milk?

Should I look for milk that has little or no cream on the top?

As far as I can see, I did nothing wrong with my processes.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd be delighted to read and learn.

Thanks!

[Andrew Marshallsay]

Hi Nerd (or should that be Curd?)
I haven't tried mozzarella but looking at the posts on the forum I get the impression that it's actually a pretty tricky cheese and yet it's often one that new cheese-makers try.
The one thing that I can suggest is that a lot of recipes leave the curds to sit for a short time before stirring. This allows the surface of the curds to harden a little and reduces the chances of shattering. On looking into Caldwell's book (Mastering Artisan Cheese Making) I find that her mozzarella recipe calls for a 10 minute rest before stirring. It also calls a smaller cut of 1 to 1.3 cm.
It sounds like you gave up when the curds shattered. If so, you might consider persevering when things go wrong. You might have ended up with something worthwhile even if not a mozzarella.
As for the cream on the milk, I can only tell you that I can buy two brands of unhomogenised milk and I find that the one that has the least cream on top seems to make the better cheese. I'm sure that some of the more knowledgable members of the forum will be able to give you more information.
Lastly, don't give up. We all have our failures but the ones that work make up for all that.

[CurdNerd]

Thanks Andrew.

I've actually been making cheese for a couple of years, but I still consider myself to be new and quite a novice. I have had many successes, Feta (Cow), Brie, Camembert, Stilton, Colby, Blue Vein, but I have had a lot of failures along the way as well. Like this one, totally inexplicable.

Don't worry, I am not going to give up! I am going to keep trying and learning. 

The first batch of Mozzarella I tried, yes I just dumped it. The second one though, I kept heating and stirring up to 42 degrees and poured the resulting mush into the cheese cloth and let it drain. After about 5 minutes, I scooped out some curd and placed it into 70 Degree hot water for about 30 seconds. It went soft and melty like it should, but when I tried to stretch it, it just ripped apart. It was totally useless.

Thanks for your thoughts on the cream at the top of the milk. I too thought this may be playing a part. As you said though, let's see what some others have to say as well.

Thanks for your positive encouragement. 

Brendan.

[CurdNerd]

Wow Andrew! Thanks so much for you suggestion about resting after cutting the curd. I just learned something new!

I have just found out about healing curds!

I just read some articles about it and it makes perfect sense! Maybe I did need to leave the curd to heal for a bit before I stirred and heated them.

I have learned all my cheese making techniques from the Mad Millie cheese kits/on-line videos. The recipe book supplied in the kits never mentions anything about healing curds when you make Mozzarella. I have noted they do tell you to leave the cut curd to rest after cutting for some other cheese recipes, but they don't refer to it as "healing" nor do they say why you do it and what effect it has on the curd.

I think this might be something to try. Letting the curds heal for 10 minutes after the cut.

I might give it another go tomorrow. I'll see how I feel then. The supermarket might have some better milk as well, with a little less cream on the top!

I have already wasted $15.00 on milk today that went down the drain, so I'm not at all prepared for another failure, but I don't want this to get the better of me!

[Stinky]

Yeah, definitely heal. And after that, instead of stirring, try just gently jiggling the pot for a while, and then starting sloooooooowly stirrrrrring.

I've personally never gotten to work mozzarella to work correctly (0/8) but I hope to figure it out someday. I got close the last time, but made a miscalculation and ended up shattering about half the curds.

Shaking the bottle makes no difference in this case.

[CurdNerd]

Thanks everyone.

Alright, I'm giving it another go today.

Also, the milk today looks much better. It's expiry date is the 20/8/15, much longer than the dates on yesterdays milk. Also, there was virtually no cream on the top of the bottles.

I am going to water bath the pot for the 30 minutes after adding the rennet, during the cutting and the heal. I didn't do that yesterday, but today I will.

i will also try gently jiggling the pot instead of stirring at first, and just go really slowly.

I will let you know how I go!

[Andrew Marshallsay]

Good luck

[CurdNerd]

Nope. Same result.

Dismal failure. 

No difference to yesterday's effort. Healing the curd made absolutely no difference.

I don't know what else to do.

It's not my method... It's not my equipment, it's not my rennet, it can't be the milk, that's 3 different batches of milk. I'm ensuring everything is sterile.

I find it hard to believe that commercial cheese makers don't suffer these kinds of failures? there must be something I am doing wrong.

[awakephd]

Is the milk pasteurized, ultra-pasteurized, or ?? (If the latter, that could explain the problem.)

Regardless, though, I have never had good results with the acid-added mozarella. It always seems to shatter badly. You might try a traditional mozzarella, letting it acidify via a thermophilic culture. I've still not mastered that approach, but have had at least better, halfway-decent results.

[CurdNerd]

Hi Andy,

I just checked the bottles, it is just pasteurized, not ultra.

I think I am not going to bother with Mozzarella any more. I'm not a rich man and I really can't afford to be throwing good money down the drain. Unless I can pinpoint exactly what it is that is going wrong, I am not going to be trying it again.

I will just stick to the Camembert, Brie and Blues that I love so much and are SOOOO much easier to make. 

[Stinky]

Fair enough. I've not Mozzarella'd yet, so I completely understand you. 

[Boofer]

I think I am not going to bother with Mozzarella any more.

I tried mozz once in the beginning...it didn't work for me so I decided to concentrate on other styles that were more attractive to me.

The Jersey milk that I use is wonderfully rich with cream. Here I have marked the cream level on the milk jugs. I don't skim the cream. The cream makes my cheeses that much richer and full-flavored. If the milk is fresh, the cream easily reincorporates into the milk. The older it gets the firmer/harder the cream becomes and the less it wants to mix with the milk, but I still shake it up. If there's too much, sometimes I end up skimming little islands of butterfat right before I drain my whey.

I too have experienced failures. There's a lot of learning from my mistakes in this cheese making experience. 

-Boofer-