My First Cheese

[Boofer]

And you might want to steel yourself and wait at least a month or two before cutting into this one.

Patience, grasshopper. 

If you find yourself getting the urge to cut into it, make another cheese instead.

By the way, did you follow a recipe? If so, what? I think you didn't because you didn't have a name for the cheese you made, right?

Your cheese efforts look good so far.

-Boofer-

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1591.0.html < that tomme recipe is what i followed and then pressed it like a cheddar before doing a quick-ish brine, now drying.  so its a pressed tomme unless there is another name for it?

[dthelmers]

ok, so did this exact thing again, with pressing and all, same times as last time and am now drying it at room temp, around 15c and flipping every morning and night.  not dry salting it.  but its not slouching...its almost expanding from the top and bottom middle i am very worried i got a yeast infection of some sort, the sides are not bulging

It might not be swellling. I've noticed this on some of my cheeses, and what was really happening was the corner of the wheel shrinking faster than the center of the wheel, so the edges were drawing in and making it look like the top and bottom were swelling. I figured it out by comparing it side by side with a cheese fresh out of the press, and saw that my sides were shorter but my overall height was the same. I think it looks fine.
If you want a fast ripening cheese so you don't have to wait a long time to see how it came out, try a Caerphilly - you can eat them at 3 weeks. I use the 200 Easy Home Made Cheese Recipes make, which doesn't involve cheddaring. Also, check out JeffHamm's posts on Caerphilly.

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

my first thought was exactly that the sides were shrinking and the top and bottom was not yet as it wasnt drying, but then my imagination kicked in and went KABLAM! so yea, i thought id post and ask and answers i did receive thank you

[DeejayDebi]

Not to worry! Cheese really is a remarkable thing. Except for maybe the lactose droopy slip skin cheeses I've never seen a cheese posted that couldn't be eatten.

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

and i look forward to trying all sorts of one off creations

[DeejayDebi]

I'll bet you are! There are so many cheeses and so little time & $$$ to make them all. I have been collecting and translating cheeses (mostly hard Italians) for nearly 30 years so if you have something in mind between Pav, Ed, Francois and me we might have it covered.

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

There are so many cheeses and so little time & $$$ to make them all.

You are completely right about that one! I have one day a week if im lucky and if i'm unlucky I have one day a month I can make cheese and gallon of p/h milk here is almost $5

[DeejayDebi]

Yeah I hear that! I am a weekender too if I am not busy with sausage or some catering thing. Store bought milk here is $4/gallon but I can get raw milk for $6/gallon and I prefer raw. The extra cream is wonderful. Hopefully get my walking papers today from the doctor so I can do something. This being still and no driving is MADDENING!

[iratherfly]

Yes Debi, but it gets you back on the forum more often!

Threelittlepiggiescheese I wouldn't worry about bulging or anything like that. WAY TOO EARLY to detect any yeast contamination and WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY TOOOO EARLY to give it any taste. It's totally wacky and out of balance. The lactic bacteria is still doing its job, succesive bacteria had not started yet, proteins and fats have not began to break down, mineral shift has not evened out yet (salt, moisture, calcium etc.) There is absolutely nothing that the cheese can tell you now; not even that it's too salty (because some of the salt create osmosis and then runs off the cheese with moisture).  I usually tell people who just start out to begin with fresher, short aging cheeses like Crottin, Chaource etc. because the impatience and desire to have a taste of a first cheese it too strong and who can learn anything if you have to wait 2 months to judge what you did last time?  The best way is to make one of these and as it ages make other short-term cheeses that you can taste and improve upon while this one ages.

I age my Tommes a minimum of 6 weeks. They are ideal at 2-5 months. There is one recipe I do for 5 months and the longer I've ever done was 9 months.

The best advice I can give you (and I have done *A LOT* of Tommes) is to watch for acidity. That's the number one killer of these cheeses and it usually happens within the first 30 minutes of making them (and you discover it months later, when you get a hard, brittle un-melty brick...).

Salt isn't just a flavorant in cheese. It helps create the rind that protects it from drying and becomes the medium for beneficial mold growth, it slows down lactic acid production. More importantly, it is an antiseptic that deters pathogenic yeasts, molds and bacterium (most of which cannot sustain at high salt concentrations, however most of the good microbes you want on your cheese actually do survive it). Another very important function of it is osmosis: It helps wick out the excess moisture in the cheese and drains the whey out of it.  You can also use it to control some of the rind molds and toughness of the rind. Don't skimp out on it - proper salting is super important.

Salting shouldn't complicated. I personally only use brine if I make multiple or really large cheese or plan on re-using it for another make. Otherwise I find it fussy and wasteful (lots of salt, takes a while to dissolve in hot water but you need it to be cool before brining to it takes a while to chill. Then you need to balance its pH to match the cheese and add calcium to prevent mineral shift. On top of that you have to be there to turn the cheese in it and to take it out of the brine later so you need to plan your day around it).  If you choose to brine it, you must do it right and brine it at the prescribed amount (fully saturated brine of 24% salt, cool at 55°F with calcium added and enough drops of vinegar to bring it to 5.5pH, at 1.5 hour per side -per Lb. of cheese at this size. 2 hours per lb. per side if it's over 5 lbs.).
Dry salting is the easiest thing in the world and it's very proper for Tomme. Many farmstead producers use this method too. For this cheese, do the following:
1. weigh the wheel (for example, 2200g)
2. calculate 2% of the weight in salt (per the above example, 44g of salt needed)
3. Divide the pile of salt to two halves. Dry salt the top of the cheese, turn cheese over dry salt the other side with the other half of salt. This will look like a lot of salt and if you are having trouble loading so much on the cheese, rub some on the sides of it!

That's all there's to it. This cheese should have 1.5% final salt balance and to get that, you need about 1.75% salt to attack it... we are using 2% because we account for the fact that in dry salting you always end up with some salt falling off the cheese or being sprinkled around it when you dry salt so there is a little loss there.  You can reduce it to 1.75% if you don't like it too salty but really no less.

One last note on the subject: When you press cheese hard (as you did!) you want to brine it longer or salt it a bit more (cheddars which are pressed as hard as you did get their salt in the milled curd before they are formed). That's because it's more dense and less moist so it is harder for the salt to make its way into it and dissolve.

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

the first one i dry salted i probably hit more like 12% of the weight in salt, so that would explain the saltiness, but i want to try to forgo the salt on this one unless i see in the next day or two that its begging for it, for what it is worth through the saltiness of the last wheel I was able to taste what was similar to a cheddar style cheese flavour with a butteryness, so I am going to be extremely patient for this one because I want to see what a mature flavour would be for it.

[iratherfly]

What do you mean "forgo the salt"?  No salt at all? I would strongly advise against for all the reasons I mentioned on top; rind formation, protection from contaminants and pathogens, too much whey and lactic acid activity etc. -not to mention the really terrible flavor of saltless cheese. (It's really awful).  Just salt in moderation. You can go down to 1.3% if you really need to.

As for butteriness, my feeling is that you may have come across some concetration of butterfat. the type of buttery notes that you seek in cheese can't be noticed so early on because diacetyl production is still rather insignificant. The butterfat that you have tasted will break down and translate to the sharp notes of the cheese as it ages.

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

ok, its salted with 2% of its weight in salt, lets see what happens

[iratherfly]

Keep us posted!

What type of rind treatment are you doing? Natural? Washed? Dunked? Vacuum?

[Threelittlepiggiescheese]

was thinking olive oiling it