Flavoring Lactic Acid Cheeses

[mhorlick]

Hi,

This is sort of a continuation of an earlier post when I asked about making cheese with either chocolate and strawberry milk. Also, I wondered about using lower fat milk.

Well, anyways I made the recipe for "Lactic Cheese" from the "Home Cheesing Book" and used 2% milk. I also added about a cup of defrosted purried raspberries to the milk before adding the starter and rennet.

The cheese was less definitely less creamy than the one I made and I think most of the raspberry flavor and coloring was lost in the whey.

I was wondering if I should have added the raspberries to the milk before the culture and rennet or after when time for draining?

Thanks,

Mike

[Cheese Head]

Mike, great idea and questions.

Good try on your raspberry flavoured cheese, less creamy could be because of 2% vs whole milk. Is it a fresh cream cheese type of a pressed and aged cheese?

For cream type cheeses, after hanging is normally when you add flavourings, or even after a day resting in the fridge. For hard cheese you can go early like with the cummin cheeses made on this forum but for something as delicate as raspberries I think after whey removed and before pressing when you normally add salt (unless adding to the rind after pressing) is best and as you found.

Again, great idea and try, next time you try we'd love a few pictures as no one here has I think gone down your road . . .

We've got some semi dried mangoes in cupboard, if boiled a little to rehrydrate that would make a nice cream cheese or just leave semi-hard for pressed cheese . . . need more tiome and too many cheeses to eat already.

[mhorlick]

Thanks for the advice. This is a fresh cream cheese. I thought I would try to simulate making with a milk like the commercial chocolate and strawberry milk and I had a bunch of raspberries on-hand.

While I have your attention, I have been looking at some of the links you supplied during the thread of my last post and I have a couple of questions.

I used up the last of my 5 packets of mesophilic direct-set I got from New England Cheesemaking and I was thinking about re-ordering but this time the re-culturable cultures. Now I see from the forum how to make the starter. 
Will give that a whirl. One question... Is the commercial starter any better than the one made from cultured buttermilk described on this forum?

Now the only thing is where to find the calcium chloride locally that I thought I would order along with the starter?

Thanks,

Mike   

[Cheese Head]

So far I've only used the meso & thermophilic lactic cultures in those two links, but I did finally make a big order and now have some Danisco Brand MM100 Starter Culture that I have not yet used. So in summary I don't know, my only recommendation with the homemade ones is give them lots of time to ripen before using.

I think reg primarily uses homemade, DD uses manufactured and Tea uses re-culturable starter cultures so they should be able to give more advice.

Food grade CaCl2 I've had a problem finding locally. I've had some old industrial CaCl2 that I used until my ortder came in last week. Theres a thread on this here, the only place I have not yet tried is a salt water aquarium store. Even without quality CaCl2 I think adding a small amount of regular non-iodized salt helps the curd formation. For me Í just add a little more rennet. Rennet is super concentrated stuff, so when adding, ensure diluted in water and stir in thoroughly to get well distributed.

[Tea]

Mike I just wanted to add a note that my book has about adding fruit to yoghurt.
"If you add fresh fruit and store the yoghurt, enzymes in the fruit will break down the protein in the yoghurt.  The resultant yoghurt will most likely have a runny watery consistency."
Not sure what it does to cheese, but I would think that adding the fruit with the rennet would affect the curd formation.  I would either try adding when the curd is either to be hung, or after hanging.  Or maybe on serving.  Experiement and see what the difference is.

[mhorlick]

Thanks for your responses. 

Regards,

Mike