2nd Lancashire

[pliezar (Ian)]

You've made more varieties of cheese than I have and I have my own cow! 

Can you imagine how many varieties Jeff could make if he had his own cow? Oh and a bigger cave.

Jeff,

Well done on all of them

Ian

[anutcanfly]

The dung beetles in the office with their paper dung is just too hilarious!   

What do you do when you run out of room in your cheese cave Jeffhamm?  Do you shake or see pink elephants? 

[JeffHamm]

Thanks Boofer!  I know you're work and concentration on rind developement is paying off heaps for you too.  I've learned a lot from your threads on those topics.  A cheese in return!

And thanks everyone.  The variety looks a bit more than it is, in some ways.  I know most people will target one or two cheeses and work to develope that until they perfect it.  My personality just won't let me do that.  I like variety.  By making a wide variety of cheeses, but ones which focus on a few basic approaches, then I can still build up my skills.  For example, the caerphilly, dunlop, lancashire, cheshire, and  wenslydale all follow similar procedures.  They are all meso cheeses, that require some temperature rise over time, cheddaring, milling and salting.  The times and temperatures are different, but the steps and skills are similar.  By playing with different recipes that are similar in many ways (and comparing my notes) I hope to gain a better understanding of how to tweak each recipe to suit my situation (i.e. my tastes, my milk supply, etc). 

And the butterkase and gouda are both washed curd cheeses. 

The montasio's are pretty straight forward, and just have the scalding and cooking step where you could mess up.  But it does use lipase, unlike the previous.

The romano and manchengo were made so long ago, that I've sort of fogotten much about how they went, but I'm sure I learned lots!.     Actually, both of those require whisking the curd to rice size and use the lipase as well. 

Ian, when I run out of room in the cave, I eat more cheese!  Actually, it's full at the moment, but the butterkase is just over 1/2 gone and we're into the Lancashire now.  My parents will arrive in about 10 days, and so there will be some emptying of the cave going on.  I'll then be able to make up a bunch to prepare for Christmas / New Years.   

Hi Anut,

One of the shelves in the cave is also keeping some bottles of wine, so I could, if the bats come back, shift them and free up more space. 

- Jeff

[JeffHamm]

Just cut a small piece and put some slices on my baked potato.  This one melts nicely!   No more microwave tests, that's for sure.

- Jeff

[anutcanfly]

Did yours spread out thin?  I toasted mine on bread and though it softened and browned but it never tried to leave the toast.  In this case I think that was a good thing, but how do you deliberately make a cheese that melts?

[JeffHamm]

It melted and went gooy and stringy.  I think to get it to melt you have to hit the right pH targets.  Too little acidity and it won't melt (i.e. haloumi).  I think a search of the boards brings up a fair number of discussions where it's explained by those who actually know the details.

- Jeff

[dthelmers]

The University of Wisconsin had an article on the melt and stretch of cheese in 2000, volume 12, #1.
Here's a link:http://www.cdr.wisc.edu/newsletter/pdf/2000/pipeline_2000_vol12_1.pdf
I found it helpful and interesting. I've read through most of the archives for this newsletter, interesting reading.

[anutcanfly]

Found it! Thank you!