My first cheese - Raw Milk Mozzarella

[erfurkan]

Hello everyone.

I recently got into cheesemaking and have been trying to get my hands on the stuff I will need along the journey. In the meantime, I decided to start making relatively simple cheeses. This is my first ever attempt at making any cheese.

-I used 5 litres of fresh raw cows milk (quite easy to get in Turkey)

-Used yogurt to make a thermophilic culture. (used the recipe from here https://homecheesemaker.wordpress.com/2013/07/23/thermophilic-culture-recipe/ )

-And used animal rennet.

My process was,

1) sterilise the material
2) heat the milk to 30C
3) stir in 2 table spoon yogurt + 4 table spoon milk mixture into the milk
4) bring the temperature to 32C
5) try to maintain this temperature for 70-75 minutes (though the temperature went up to 36C, I am using an electric stove so this temperature maintaining will need some experience)
6) after the 75ish minutes, the milk was smellling acidic (at this point I have to point out that my ph papers were not precise, it had uncertainty of 1PH value so it was not working well for me. So went with the smell and feeling.)
7) then I added 2.5ml of rennet + small amount of water mixture and stirred for 15 seconds
let the curds form for 30 minutes
9) checked for clean break, success.
10) cut the curds and left them for 20 minutes
11) heated up the curds and whey to 38ishC and stir them along the way for 20 minutes (at this point my IKEA thermometer stopped working so I again had to use my senses...)
12) seperated the curds and put the curds on a colander on top of 35-45C whey, but the curds were not touching the whey.
13) I turned the curds for few times. After each turn, I did a stretch test.
14) After around 3.5 hours, stretch test yielded about 50 cms of strech from a thumb sized curd piece so I decided the curds were ready to stretch.
15) I heated up some whey and streched the curds and folded them. This part took about half an hour.
16) I shaped the curd four balls and put them in codl water.
17) Brined the cheese and put them in fridge.

Below, you can see the pictures of my final product. I am really excited to taste them with olive oil and tomato tomorrow.

I know I need practise to get better and I need better equipment. I am currently working on a used mini bar I bought to turn it into a cheese cave. So that I can make other, one can say sexier cheeses!

One thing I am wondering is that, Is there a way to improve the yield amount? I noticed that a lot of mini curds were floating in the whey and the whey almost looked like milk! I tried to make ricotta with the whey but I didnt have a cheese cloth so I had no way to get those mini curds sadly. Do you have any suggestions for me? Not only for the yield amount, I am a newbie and I wish to learn more.

[not_ally]

Congratulations on your first batch, you did really well for  making mozzarella, with an electric stove, and no thermometer! As you'll see from other posts here, mozzarella is a notoriously cheese to make, I've tried it four times with poor results.  So good for you and welcome to the board.

[pickles]

For temperature control on an electric stove try searching up info on 'bain marie', or 'water bath'.
It is a better way of keeping steady temperatures.
It is really just a large pan of water with a smaller pan inside it.
You heat the water which then gently and evenly heats the smaller pan.
You can pull them off the heater when they reach temperature then put back as the temperature drops.

I hope you find this tip useful.

...if you have trouble getting muslin or cheesecloth, you could use a fabric called voile, used for making curtains, or any light fabric, safe for use with food stuffs, say a tea towel. You must boil it to sterilise before and after using.

I hope your Mozzarella, tomatoes and olive oil turned out well. It sounded delicious.

[erfurkan]

Sorry for the late reply.

Congratulations on your first batch, you did really well for  making mozzarella, with an electric stove, and no thermometer! As you'll see from other posts here, mozzarella is a notoriously cheese to make, I've tried it four times with poor results.  So good for you and welcome to the board.

Thank you! I bought a ph meter and a thermometer, waiting for them to arrive. My mozzarella was much better than the store bought mozzarellas.. But I was not happy with the texture. A bit harder than I would like.  must have overcooked the curds.

For temperature control on an electric stove try searching up info on 'bain marie', or 'water bath'.
It is a better way of keeping steady temperatures.
It is really just a large pan of water with a smaller pan inside it.
You heat the water which then gently and evenly heats the smaller pan.
You can pull them off the heater when they reach temperature then put back as the temperature drops.

I hope you find this tip useful.

...if you have trouble getting muslin or cheesecloth, you could use a fabric called voile, used for making curtains, or any light fabric, safe for use with food stuffs, say a tea towel. You must boil it to sterilise before and after using.

I hope your Mozzarella, tomatoes and olive oil turned out well. It sounded delicious.

Thank you for your suggestions. The tomato mozzarella and olive oil was really delicious. I was quite happy with the taste. I think the raw milk did its magic.

I am currently looking for a proper mould for a gouda. Because my next cheese will be a gouda hopefully. But the moulds are really hard to find. Especially in Turkey. And due to recent high inflation the international shipping costs hurt my bugdet a lot. So I am trying to get my hands on a proper local product.

[not_ally]

Erfurkan, like you I'm in a country (India) where cheesemaking gear is basically import-only.  After paying almost 50% shipping and customs on a large-ish order from New England Cheesemaking (in the US) which included some basic forms, I'm just trying to make my own now, as needed.  I just go to cheesemaking sites to find out the size/form factor/drainage perforations of their cheese-specific forms and then look for food-grade storage containers in the same form factor and drill holes myself using a small, cheap electric drill. 

Sometimes it's hard to find the right sizes locally, but Amazon India has produced some pretty good matches in form factor for (eg) crottin, brie and taleggio molds.  Although I've yet to make the actual cheeses (waiting to empty my cave of a final batch of blues and then clean it out before I start with others), my DIY molds actually look fine, if a little rough, I think they will work well.  I'm actually crap at this DIY stuff, so your's/anyone else's would probably be even better. Needless to say, at a tiny fraction of the import price.

Linking to the mold/form sites for NEC and Glengarry, I think these two have the best selection. The Glengarry kadova molds for gouda are beautiful, but $100 USD+ for a 1 kg mold after shipping/customs!

https://cheesemaking.com/collections/cheese-molds-and-presses

https://glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca/pages/moulds

https://glengarrycheesemaking.on.ca/collections/dutch-kadova-moulds/products/k4040-baby-gouda-1-kg