No cook, no rennet cottage cheese

[Littlest Goat]

I have been attempting the no cook cottage cheese make found on the forum. I am using goat milk, Nigerian dwarf. Maybe 2-3 days old. 10 cups milk , 1/8 tsp flora danica. Heated to 76f. Add culture. Set in warm spot, wrapped in towels. At 12 hrs no curd set. At 36 hrs ( this morning) very soft curd. Would not have a clean break. Also some bubbles on surface.
  This is the 2nd attempt and it seems to be progressing the same as 1st attempt. Ended up finally straining 1st batch and calling it fromage blanc . But would like this type of cottage cheese. So any ideas, advice etc. Am wondering if i should up my culture to 1/4 t to get the acidity up more. I am guessing that I am trying to get a lactic acid set. Also curious about the random bubbles.  Thank you for considering this

[mikekchar]

Before you read the rest of this, here's the TL;DWR (Too long; Don't Wanna Read):  If you add acid quickly to milk you will get big fluffy curds that separate from the whey.  If you add acid slowly (which is what usually happens from a bacterial culture), you will get a kind of yogurt like gel that will either be a liquid to begin with, or will have curds that shatter as soon as you do anything with them.  If you want to make a lactic set cheese, you need to add a large amount of a really aggressive bacteria.  The easier way is to add citric acid.  The way you are doing it is called "clabbered cheese" in some parts, so that's a place to start looking if you want to continue with your experiment.  Note that it won't make "cottage cheese" like commercial cottage cheese because acid formed curds are very delicate -- you don't get hard squeaky curds like the rennet version.  (I wrote this paragraph last, but moved it to the top, because the following is long and probably wrong... but in case you find my musings interesting, here you go).

I have a fair amount of experience with this (I made exclusively acid set cheeses for a year).  My experience has been that *generally* bacterial cultures will *not* set a curd properly.  It makes yogurt instead.  I've tried to research this, but it's hard to find any information.  Here is my imagination of what's going on.  Keep in mind that it is probably completely wrong, but it's a model that I've used that helps me reason about the issues pretty effectively.

Acid sets a curd in cheese differently than rennet.  Quickly: rennet is an enzyme that slices off a bit of the casein "micelles" (big balls of protein).  The part it slices off is called kappa-casein.  This allows the casein to form a network with calcium ions in solution.  The casein micelles and calcium all stick together and form a gel (trapping fat an whey inside).

Acid works by reducing the electric repulsion between casein micelles.  The kappa-casein in the casein micelles are positively charged.  This makes them repel each other (like 2 magnets: + and - attract, + and + repel).  When you get down to a pH of about 4.9, the electrical charge is neutralised (this is called the "isoelectric point").  At that point, the casein micelles can stick together mechanically.  It's important to understand that the mechanical sticking together is *not* binding with calcium.  It's just sticking together like sand in a sandcastle might stick together.

The end result is that if you try to cut acid formed curds, they will shatter pretty much all the time.  A fun trick is to get a good hard set yogurt and slash it once in the container with a knife.  You can see that the whey will seep out and it looks pretty much exactly like rennet curds.  Try to do anything with that curd, though, and it will just sploosh apart into gooey yogurt.

Now, there is a trick.  For reasons that I don't understand, if you lower the pH quickly in milk to the isoelectric point, you get large curds.  It *appears* as if the curds are hydrophobic (repel water).  Here's my imagination of what's happening.  Casein micelles are made up of bundles and bundles of protein.  However, tied up in those bundles of protein is the salt calcium phosphate.  As the pH lowers, the calcium phosphate dissolves in the milk.  This does a couple of things.  First it loosens up the ball of protein (which is important for curds being able to melt) and second the calcium phosphate neutralises the acid in the milk.  This is called "buffering".

Long story short, as you add acid to the milk, the buffering capacity goes up slowly because the calcium phosphate starts to dissolve.  This brings the pH *up* (less acid).  If you add acid slowly enough, the milk gets more acidic very, very slowly.  Eventually very small curds form.  However, if you add acid very quickly and hit the isoelectric point *before the calcium phosphate has a chance to dissolve*, then you get curds forming.  Then, I think what's happening is that the milk rebounds -- the calcium phosphate dissolves and buffers the acid in the whey.  This makes the casein micelles positively charged again -- because we're bringing the pH up above the isoelectric point.

The other important thing to note is that water is what is called a "dipole".  It looks a bit like a boomerang with oxygen at the ends and hydrogen in the middle.  The hydrogen is positively charged (+) and the oxygen is negatively charged (-).  Basically it acts like a magnet too!  When the curds go up above the isoelectric point, they start to repel water because they become positively charged again.  (Note again: this is my imagination -- I don't know if it's true.  It's just my model for helping me think about what's happening).

Some people tell me that if you add a lot of culture to milk, you can get large curds.  I've never been able to replicate that.  I once even took an epoise and cultured the bacteria from it and tried that.  Several people told me that epoise is sometimes made without any rennet at all and that it forms a hard curd straight from the milk.  Again, I could not replicate it.  I'm sure it happens, but I'll say that it is very difficult to do and probably depends a lot on the milk.  There is actually one commercial clabbered cheese producer (cheese that is produced by letting raw milk coagulate and then making cheese from it), so it definitely can be done...

I've made many cheeses with citric acid instead and it works very well.  In fact, one of the things I tend to do is to add a culture, let it ferment for 1-3 hours and then add the citric acid.  This gives you a good healthy population of bacteria.  One other trick is that the isoelectric point of casein depends on temperature.  The higher the temperature, the higher the pH it will set a curd.  However, if you get too high, the curds will melt.  42 C is a good happy medium.  The curds will be about a pH of 5.1.  If you take them out, form them and salt them quickly, you can get a cheese that you can age and it won't be too acidic (obviously need a thermophilic culture).  However, I've done several using a mesophilic culture at 36 C and it was very good.

[Littlest Goat]

Hey there
Thank you for replying. I read it all and most of it made sense. A few places you lost me. I also re-read the no cook cottage cheese thread . So what do you think people are making when they do this recipe?

[mikekchar]

There are 2 types of cottage cheese: big curd cottage cheese and small curd cottage cheese.  This is "small curd cottage cheese".  I have tried, without success, to get info on how to make it reliably.  "Clabber" is where you take raw milk, hold it at about 80 F (26 C) for 20 hours or so and the curds separate from the whey.  Some people make cheese from clabber and I *believe* it's essentially the same thing as "small curd cottage cheese".  I don't have access to raw milk, so I can't try clabber.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I believe small curd cottage cheese and clabbered cheese exists!  I just don't know how to do it and I don't know where to look to find out.  I *can* tell you that it's not as easy as most recipes make out (at least in general terms).  I've tried *very* hard to do it and never once came close.  The one thing that makes me suspcious is that whenever I see a recipe for small curd cottage cheese on the internet, it invariably has a picture of large curd cottage cheese...  So I'm a little bit suspicious that most of these blog posts are written by people who have never actually tried to make it themselves (much like all recipes on the internet).  I don't think that's the case with the thread in this forum, but I'm still at a loss how they did it (and only RBF responded to my query).  As I say, my guess is to have a *very* aggressive starter culture -- or at least lots of it so that the pH goes down very quickly.

Edit:  If you figure it out, please post :-)  I will be forever grateful!

[Littlest Goat]

Have been reading some recipes around the web and am seeing a no cook ( sort of) cottage cheese from clabbered milk. Once the the milk has thickened ( this is a vague term) the clabber is dumped/ poured into a pot and on low brought to an undisclosed temp and one should see curds and whey separating. They are not cutting any curd first as by the looks of it they just have something that looks like yogurt consistency. Am also noting that people are skimming their milk. While goat milk is supposed to be naturally homogenized, I do get substantial cream separation on my milk. I can see a a cream line  down to half of a qt jar. So I am going to try again. 1st skimming off as much cream as possible. Maybe 2nd using mm100 culture. Although many people are clabbering with no additional culture added. Which seem like the whole point of clabber . Other things to try are to up the culture. Then try the heating. Also would like to leave the milk longer to see if it ever gets set up thick enough to cut the curd. I should try these various steps one at a time so I can pin point my trouble. So here goes next attempt. Wish me luck.

[River Bottom Farm]

Good luck! I have done this by accident a couple times. I had two heavy milking cows going at once so tried adding culture to the night milking thinking I could then add the morning milking and then make cheese. I think I over did it on the cultures and in the warm super fresh milk sitting outside over night the culture went wild and made cottage cheese instead of just getting things started like I wanted it to. I think the key is to skim the milk (I had seporated the night milking) and then add a healthy dose of culture or clabber to warm (around 90f) milk and let it sit.

[Littlest Goat]

I am reporting back on cottage cheese attempt #3. I decided to sacrifice a qt of milk and see if i could clabber it. I skimmed as much cream as possible and put the milk in a clean wide mouth qt jar. In a water bath i brought the temp up to 76f. Then wrapped jar in towels and place on top of my fridge. It took 3 days to thicken. However it was not thicken so that all one would do was cut curd and drain. I dumped out of the jar into a sanitized saucepan and turned on at  a low heat. I gave it some gentle stirs and soon saw separation of curds and whey. After that I proceeded with the usual washing and draining. It came out very close to what I am trying for. The curds were pretty broken down, almost grainy. But i think I handled them too roughly. So I am getting there. But it still needs work.