We've eaten over half of the last Gorgonzola I made, so it's time for another. To the extent possible, I followed Jim Wallace's recipe again. The main difference this time was that I used slightly under 1% Flora Danica mother cultures. (1 cube per gallon). Acidification was really slow, so next make I'll go for a full 2% of the culture. I also decreased rennet to shoot for a 15 minute floc time.
Day 1
Milk warmed to 87°F and CaCl added. pH 6.60
Added P. roqueforti and Flora Danica. pH was down .05 at ½ hour, so added 23 drops rennet. Floc time was 15 minutes, so cut curd at 1 hour. Rested 10 minutes.
Stirred for a little over 1 hour. pH at drain was 6.48. Bagged and drained over night. pH the next day was 4.82.
Day 2
Pretty much the same routine, except I FORGOT the CaCl! I can't really say the curd was any more fragile, but floc time with the same amount of rennet was a hair over 19 minutes.
Shooting for a pH of 5.9 at drain, but after 4 hours of intermittent stirring the pH had only dropped to 6.24 so I gave up :). That's why I'm going with a full 2% of culture next go-round.
Milled day 1 curd to approximately thumbnail size.
Started filling mold with approximately 1/3 of the softer curd on the bottom. The next 1/3 of the soft curd surrounded all of the firm curd. The last 1/3 of the soft curd went on top. I had to press down gently to get everything into the mould.
After the mould was filled, flipped it about every half hour until bedtime. Continued flipping the next day, tapering off to every hour or 2.
This cheese is dry salted over 3 days, with total salt equal to 4% of the initial cheese weight. 50% of the salt is used on day 4. 30% of the salt is used on day 5, 20% of the salt is used on day 6. Each day's salting was divided into morning and evening doses.
So, with a cheese weight of 2027 Grams, here is the salt schedule:
Day Side 1 (Morning) Side 2 (Evening)
4 25% of total or 20 grams 25% of total or 20 grams
5 15% of total, or 12 grams 15% of total, or 12 grams
6 10% of total, or 8 grams 10% of total, or 8 grams
I've salted the first side, so this will be a work in progress for a while. I'll post some pics in a bit.
Larry
Looking forward to the images. I really want to try this recipe when my mold-cave has free space.
:-) Danbo
Second try at photos. I must have ticked the website off the first time...
And a few more...
Looking great! :-)
Just adding a couple progress photos here. The first one is from day 4, the last day of salting. I'm only posting it to show the liquid and "gunk" I get after 3 days of salting. This cheese got 4% of its weight in salt.
The second picture is from today, day 10. Notice no blue formation :) I think that's primarily because of the heavy salting as well as not using P.roq. in the soft outer curd.
Larry
Amazing how much liquid it has expelled... :-)
Here's a day 12 photo, showing how little external blue I get.
It's looking goooooood! :-)
:-) Danbo
That blue is coming along nicely. :D
Here's another photo from today showing more blue, and also the start of some B. linens.
Humidity has been running 90 to 91%, and I think I'll leave it there a while longer to see what develops externally. I'll crank it back into the 80s when I'm done playing. :) The recipe calls for the first piercing at 15 days and the second at 20, but I'll probably wait until day 20 to do both sides.
The cheese is starting to get a nice funk, and the rind is really sticky.
Larry
Great! :-)
Humidity was at 96% today. I decided to go ahead and punch holes today. Not much to report, other than the outside of the cheese is still slimy/sticky and has a nice funky blue smell. I'm going to start propping the box lid up slightly and start bringing humidity down.
Larry
Cheeseworms! ;-) Looking great.
Day 21 update. Punched the other side today. Humidity is around 91% and temps are running around 54°F.
Larry
It's progressing nicely...
This Gorgonzola definitely has more going on with its exterior than my last one. I've intentionally manhandled it when I flip it and generally kept the cave humidity higher. I'm bringing humidity down at this point. besides the blue, there is some Geo and B. linens. Definitely has a slight funk to it. :)
This is day 26. About 2 weeks until I chop it open.
Larry
That's great!! My best rinds have started out exactly like that!!! ;)
Funky fellow! :-)
Well, today was cutting day. It has been about 6-1/2 weeks since the make and a little over 4 weeks since the first piercing.
It's a nice mild blue at this point. I've vacuum sealed most of it for further aging.
Larry
And a couple more photos, including the bags.
Larry
What can I say a cheese for you ;D
Wow that looks amazing!!! Have a cheese!!!!
and from me ... It's a work of art...
just wonderful !!
Gorgeous! I wanna make one ... how many gallons of milk did you use?
AC4U!
This is a 4 gallon cheese, with 2 gallons the first day for the hard interior curd and 2 gallons the second day for the softer exterior.
Larry
An amazing success Larry!!! AC4U
Thanks everyone. We compared this cheese to the Gorgonzola I made in November. It's amazing how much sharper these get, even sealed in a vacuum bag. The 4 month cheese has a really nice P. roqueforti bite. The 6 week cheese has the flavor, but is very mild. My wife prefers the younger one slightly, and I prefer the aged.
Here are a couple comparison photos. Old on the left, young on the right. This also shows how well this cheese survives vacuum bagging.
Larry
Niiiiiice! :-)
Larry,
I decided to try my hand at a Gorgonzola Picante this weekend, and in the process noticed a couple of interesting differences / questions -- when I checked Jim Wallace's recipe on www.cheesemaking.com (http://www.cheesemaking.com), I noticed that he called for thermo (yoghurt) rather than meso -- but all other recipes used meso, including your use of FD. I decided to use a 4:2:1 combination of MA011, MD088, and TA061 -- essentially something like FD + a dash of thermo. We'll see how it comes out ...
I also noticed that you used 1/3 of the first day's curd on bottom and top, and 1/3 on the sides. For my make, it worked better to use 1/4 on bottom and top, and 1/2 on sides -- may be just a difference in the shape of my mold, which was a bit more squat than I would have liked. (It looks like the cheese will be about 2/3 as tall as it is wide.)
In any case, I hope my results will be half as good as yours!
A cheese for you as well LN. Your comparisons with vac bagging is helpful. Maybe we need to start up a "Blues Brothers" club 8).
Well I think it looks terrible. It is obviously a total failure.
I think the best thing you can do is to bag it all up and post it to me and I will ensure it gets disposed of properly ;)
Won't help Guiseppe. I tried posting cheese to Alp. Not fast enough and rediculously expensive. We need to go and pick it up. LOL
Stop by and pick me up Al, I will help you guys get rid of that nasty lookin thing >:D
Damn and I was going to fly over... looks like I miss out again. :)
Quote from: awakephd on March 15, 2015, 03:48:28 PM
Larry,
I decided to try my hand at a Gorgonzola Picante this weekend, and in the process noticed a couple of interesting differences / questions -- when I checked Jim Wallace's recipe on www.cheesemaking.com (http://www.cheesemaking.com), I noticed that he called for thermo (yoghurt) rather than meso -- but all other recipes used meso, including your use of FD. I decided to use a 4:2:1 combination of MA011, MD088, and TA061 -- essentially something like FD + a dash of thermo. We'll see how it comes out ...
I also noticed that you used 1/3 of the first day's curd on bottom and top, and 1/3 on the sides. For my make, it worked better to use 1/4 on bottom and top, and 1/2 on sides -- may be just a difference in the shape of my mold, which was a bit more squat than I would have liked. (It looks like the cheese will be about 2/3 as tall as it is wide.)
In any case, I hope my results will be half as good as yours!
My use of Flora Danica stems back to when I only had one culture. :). Well, I had the small packets from NEC, but opted to go with something that had a name. It worked, so I kept on using it. One thing I like about it is that it supposedly creates a little more open structure because of gas production. I don't really know if it helps, but it doesn't seem to have hurt.
As far as the 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 distribution, I didn't weigh or measure it, I just SWAGd it.
I'm looking forward to seeing yours.
Just getting caught back up on the forum. I went to Ohio for my brother's 60th.
Larry
Yes John, there's a lot of good blue activity going on here.
Ozzie, Al, H-K-J, Guiseppe, you guys crack me up.
Thanks everyone for the cheeses.
Larry