tangerine's Cream Cheese - Trouble

[tangerine]

Hi, I'm new here.

I love cream cheese, and so does the rest of my family.  I have access to raw cream, and would love to make a raw cream cheese.  I made it once, using 100% cream, (the uncooked recipe from Ricki's book,) at the tail end of winter, and formed a solid curd and make over 2 lb.s of cream cheese.  It was amazing.  I loved it.   

I have now tried 4 times since then and it never formed a curd.  I thought it was the temperature not staying steady, but I keep it in a cooler so temperature drops at night won't effect it.  I'm just not sure anymore.  I just joined this group to get some help, and found a few recipes here calling for mesophilic starter and rennet.  I'll try that next time.  I use the direct set mesophilic starter.  Could it be I'm not stirring enough, or too much?  Would the rennet help it to form a curd?  I'm buying raw cream from a farmer, and it is very expensive and getting frustrated with the lack of success after my first lucky try. 

Any ideas?

[Cheese Head]

Hi Tangerine, I've made Cream Cheese a couple times and it's lighter cousin Neuchatel several but always using store bought pasteurized and homogenized milk or cream, meso starter culture and rennet. I have have several posts of my records here on this board. The only purpose (I believe) to adding rennet is to form a curd so that you can expel whey to dewater the milk or cream.

Generally I haven't had a problem, I use a mesophilic starter culture and rennet to form a curd, then cut it and place in bag to remove excess whey and let culture grow to form the cream cheese. You say your first batch formed a solid curd and I think with meso starter and no rennet, correct? If you don't use rennet then you shouldn't get a curd, are you referring more to your end product, the cream cheese?

[tangerine]

Well, it does in Ricki's book that it will make a solid curd, with just meso culture and it did.... that is the first time.  I then drained it in butter muslin (fine cheese cloth) and a little whey came out, but most of the cream had been turned into cream cheese.

I have done it 4 times since then, and it is always the same consistency as it was when I poured the cream in, but has the flavor of cream cheese.  It pours right through the cheese cloth.  I even tried a thin tea towel, and it went through that too.

I saw your posts about cream cheese, and want to try it with rennet.  I have a little cream left, maybe I'll mix it with milk, to make half and half. 

I want to look into making meso starter culture, as I think it will save me money in the long run.

[Tea]

Hi tangerine, I have played around with this quite a bit.  There is a fairly long post here somewhere with all my trials.
I found that just under 1/3 cream to milk gave me the best results.  I used cheese cloth and a tea towel to strain otherwise it was too thin.  I recently bought better cheese cloth, and I fold it to four layers before straining.  I hang between 4-6 hours.  HTH