John (and all others),
As stated in the title I tried your Neufachel (I know I'm spelling this wrong but I'm too lazy to look it up), recipe and I have to say it was a lot of fun to do.
This is the first soft cheese I've made other than cottage and that was my first EVER cheese, three years ago.
First of all I was amazed at how firm the curd had gotten after 18 hours of ripening and secondly....I thought the whey would never drain out of this cheese since it is ladled and not cut.
Honestly, even after 8 hours of draining I was not satisfied with the firmness of the cheese. It still felt to me as if there was a lot of whey hiding within the curd.
Well my solution to this was to give it a bit of a pressing.
I left it in the cheesecloth bag....put the bag into a 4" mold and proceeded to put about 10 lbs. of pressure on it.
Well immediately very clear whey began to issue from the cheese. I left the cheese under this pressure until the whey stopped flowing.
I now have a nice moist yet solid ball of cream cheese that resembles Philly style in every way (except the taste is MUCH better).
My main objective was to produce a cheese much like the commercial variety.
Since this will be used in a cheese ball I didn't want any liquid issuing from the cheese after it has sat for awhile.
It still remains to be seen if I have in fact accomplished this goal but at least I can hope. :-)
I still can't get over the fact that I enjoyed making this cheese nearly as much as a hard cheese. I might even try another cottage cheese in the near future.
Thanks for your previous advice. This was fun.
Dave
Dave, you are welcome but to be frank, I didn't invent that recipe (https://cheeseforum.org/Recipes/Recipe_Neufchatel.htm), it's a compilation of other Neufchatel Recipes along with my and others experience including tricks and traps. I just noticed that it didn't include cutting the curd which I've done on a couple of my makings.
I'll update the recipe with my cutting and your pressing as options. Send me a PM or reply here with any other updates to that recipe.
Also, I do get a little bit of whey leakage ovr time with mine, maybe yours won't as you pressed it.
Glad you like it, simple, quick as no aging, rewarding.
Pics?
Yes, Pics please??? :)
HEY copy cat. I said it first. ;)
LOL@ you two....
Okay, no pics this time (although it really did look cool in the bowl) because this was made simply to try as the base ingredient for a cheese ball.
As soon as it had time to "set" in the fridge my wife mixed all of the ingredients together and formed it up.
She was impressed that it actually formed into a ball since she saw the cheese in it's early stages. When this cheese went into the cloth it really was more of a soup than a cheese.
When I make the next one ( in a week or so) I'll be sure to post some pics.
Hopefully it will turn out even better since I'm taking it to my next racquetball tournament.
Hmmmm....I just though of something.
I might not practice proper hygiene in the making of this next cheeseball.
If I can get my main competition to eat enough tainted cheeseball I might actually be able to beat a couple of them. :-)
Dave
If you two don't stop arguing I'm going to turn this forum right around and go home!!
Are we there yet???