If ever there was a cheese at cross-purposes, this is it. Develop blue mold on the inside, but only white mold on the outside. Maintain air space in the internal curd for blue development, yet keep a relatively smooth surface outside. Make it bluey, but make it gooey. :) Age it enough to develop some blue character, but not so much that it ammoniates and liquefies.
This is my first attempt at balancing all the factors necessary to get a product that somewhat satisfies both sets of criteria. It might be a total failure, but hopefully we'll have enough information to know what direction to head next time. Whatever it turns out to be, chances are it'll be edible.
I borrowed heavily from Jim Wallace's Camblu recipe on the NEC site, and tweaked it a bit toward getting a little more blue. Time will tell...
Ingredients
3 gallons creamline milk
1 qt. heavy cream
4 or 5 cubes Flora Danica
45 drops rennet
¾ tsp 30% CaCl
Penicillium roqueforti
1/8 rounded tsp Penicillium candidum
1/32 rounded tsp Geotrichum candidum
2% salt
Process
Heat milk and cream to 90°F.
While heating add CaCl
When up to temperature, add Flora Danica. Let sit for 30 minutes, or until pH drops approx. 0.1
Add rennet. Floc time _12_minutes. X6 multiplier= _72_ until cut. (This was a little fast. I'll cut rennet back to 40 drops next time).
Cut curds to ¾ to 1 inch. Rest 5 minutes and slowly stir for about 30 to 45 minutes. Curd should have some skin. Drain curd, but don't let settle and clump. (pH at this point was 6.45).
Fill 4 molds (Reblochon approximately 1/3 full. Lightly sprinkle a little P. roqueforti on the curds in the molds. Keep away from the outsides.
Add more curd and sprinkle as above until out of curd. (I took about 45 minutes to complete filling the molds. There were 4 layers, with P.candidum in 3 levels, about 1/32 tsp total between 4 cheeses at each level).
Place board over followers and use 1 ea. 3 pound weight centered between the 4 cheeses.
Flip cheeses every ½ hour to hour until bedtime. Keep at room temperature.
Day 2, unmold and salt 1 side of each cheese with 1% of its weight of salt. Put back in form with salt side up. After 8 to 12 hours, flip cheese and salt other sides with additional 1% of cheese weight in salt. Return to molds at room temperature.
Day 3 Unmold cheeses and place in drying room at 60°F, 60 to 75% humidity. Flip cheeses often.
Day 4 Move cheeses to 55°F, 85%RH. Perforate both sides of cheeses. Keep flipping often.
Day 6 Mix 100 grams non chlorinated water, 4 grams salt, GC and PC in a spray bottle. Let sit overnight refrigerated.
Day 7 Lightly mist each cheese with above mixture. Allow to dry slightly and return to cave.
Day 8 Repeat. Flip cheeses once or twice a day.
In 7 to 10 more days, when PC coat is fully bloomed, turn temperature down to 42 to 45°F. Maintain high humidity.
If holes close over at any time, re-perforate as needed. Cheese should be soft and ready at 30 to 45 days. Cheese can be wrapped and placed in regular refrigerator at this point.
Notes
pH at 9:00 PM was 5.5.
pH at 6:30 AM on day 2 was 4.93.
Cheeses averaged 563 grams. Salt for each side of each cheese is 56 grams.
Larry
4/4/15 Edited Day 4 humidity setting
Looks nice. I look forward to see them develop. :-)
I just ordered three of those molds for just this purpose. ;)
They seem to be a pretty good form factor for this. 3 gallons milk plus 1 quart cream was just right for 4 of them.
Larry
Yeah, I had a couple other cheeses lined up for them as well with a 2 gallon make. The Vacherin being one of them.
Day 4
Perforated the cheeses and set temperature at 55°F and humidity at 85%. Humidity is different than on my original plan. I've edited the first post to reflect this change.
Since I'm not trying to grow PC and GC yet, I don't see any reason to get humidity up into the range that supports these molds. With the cheeses perforated, blue will hopefully get a little head start before I spray whites on day 7. (Always subject to change). :)
Larry
WOW!! They are looking Great 8)
Looking forward to watching this quartet of Cambozola's! And a cheese for you Larry for the excellent description :).
@Larry they look great ! Definitely a cheese required. Nice...
Thanks, H-K-J, John and Mal. Your comments are appreciated.
Larry
Very nice!!! Do you mix your PR with milk before adding it to the layers Larry? I have been do this but don't know if it's right or not. Seems that the powder may be better but I thought you had to re-hydrate PR before use.
In this case, I lightly sprinkled it on the curds in 3 internal layers, trying to keep it away from the outside edges.
No, I just sprinkled it dry. Hopefully it doesn't matter if the mold is pre-hydrated, since it gets put on very wet curd anyway. I think if it was hydrated in milk it'd be tough to keep just in the interior. It's all a big experiment, so maybe we'll have an answer if when these get cut. ;)
Jim shows a dry sprinkle on his Camblu recipe on the NEC site.
Larry
I'll be very interested to see one of these cut. I pierced mine in the side along the line of PR. At least I think I hit it. LOL
I considered a side piercing also, but wasn't too sure about how well the curds had bonded. Ultimately, I chickened out. Didn't want chunks o' cheese at this early stage.
Larry
Quote from: LoftyNotions on April 06, 2015, 02:07:53 PM
I considered a side piercing also, but wasn't too sure about how well the curds had bonded. Ultimately, I chickened out. Didn't want chunks o' cheese at this early stage.
Considering that the PR "target" sits largely parallel to the top of the cheese, piercing from the top or bottom ensures that air gets into the PR. Coming in from the side presents the target on edge so some of the shots are going to miss. A)
Great points, Kern. In addition, there's a shorter path to oxygen.
Larry
Quote from: Kern on April 06, 2015, 03:18:00 PM
Quote from: LoftyNotions on April 06, 2015, 02:07:53 PM
I considered a side piercing also, but wasn't too sure about how well the curds had bonded. Ultimately, I chickened out. Didn't want chunks o' cheese at this early stage.
Considering that the PR "target" sits largely parallel to the top of the cheese, piercing from the top or bottom ensures that air gets into the PR. Coming in from the side presents the target on edge so some of the shots are going to miss. A)
Typically, on these cheeses, the only blue you get tends to be at the piercing. There aren't any gaps between the curd for the blue to form in. Piercing in from the edge at angles is your best chance to have long striations of blue.
No argument from me on this, Al. It is very clear from the photo you published that this was done from the sides. I think that would stagger and angle the piercings for the greatest chance of hitting the PR when coming in from the sides. I also might come in from the top in the same fashion.
These received their second spray of GC and PC today. Now it's just flip and wait...
Larry
White and blue fuzzies are starting to duke it out. It looks like quite a bit of blue washed through to the surface. It'll be interesting to see which one wins this battle.
Larry
Doing mine as I type. Milk is heating. Those look awesome! AC4U!!
Thanks Al. I'll be looking for your thread.
Larry
LOL, Probably not going to happen. I've done three different cheeses over the last two weekends. A Caciotta del Filetto Rosso, a Jarlsberg, and these Cambozolas. Haven't taken the time to take many pictures. I may post the results when they are all done though. ;)
Day 20. It looks like white is winning the surface battle. I currently have this cave temperature at 46°F. Not because I like that specific temperature, but because it's as low as this cave goes. I'll have to do some cave swapping soon to accommodate these as well as some young white bloomys.
These are still pretty firm, probably because of the way I handled the curd to try to get some airspace internally for the blue.
Larry
Fine results so far. :-) AC4U!
Very nice. Another cheese from me also.
Looking great Larry!! Hope mine blue up that well!!
These never did soften, in spite of the white mold's best efforts. :) I kind of expected that going in, because I skewed the make toward blue production internally. I'll go for a softer cheese on my next make.
Over-all, I'm really happy with these cheeses though. I did get good internal bluing, which was the main thing I wanted. Taste is very mild, partly due to age, and partly due to the PS strain of blue I used for this make. The white mold didn't add much to the flavor profile that I could notice.
Larry
Larry, they do look nice tho' . These would probably make a good introduction to a blue cheese for someone a little hesitant. I'm not sure which is the more virilent the blue or the white - I'm thinking the Blue is the more potent. From G.C's book, her descritption on how a Blue ripens compared to a bloomy could be the reason they never softened. Just guessing here.
A cheese as well.
-- Mal
They came out excellent Larry. I've actually made a couple of stabilised camembert and a cambozola based on your recipe from the one batch (I used more milk than I originally intended). I've been spraying the PC mixture onto the cheeses, but so far after nearly a week I see no white mould. How light (or heavy) did you spray your cheeses? I've only sprayed the cambo once today, but there are no signs of blue mould on the outside yet either. Fingers crossed something starts happening soon.
Have a cheese from me for your beautiful cambo's.
Shane
Nice job, Lofty. A cheese for your efforts! ;)
I made my first Cambozola this morning and the 4 cheeses are in the molds draining. I used Ann Hansen's recipe from Caldwell's book. It is similar to the one you used. The P. roqueforti was sprinkled on in one layer. The Hansen recipe called for a 20 minute drain in a cloth lined colander prior to mold filling. I think that this is a poor way to do this as the curds had pretty much knitted together as the whey drained. But it looks like I mashed things enough in the molds to get a decent knit.
In thinking about both recipes I wonder if mine will get gooey. I suspect not. The Cambo recipe has a high loading of fat from the added cream and this, according to Caldwell, may stabilize things retarding gooeyness. I actually had to skim off a handful of yellow "butter" before draining the curds! Finally, I wonder if one wants a runny Cambo. The commercial ones I've tried are soft and spreadable but not runny. It seems to me if it got runny then the blue color would diffuse in the yellow/white curd defeating the purpose of a Cambo.
Shane made a Cambo a couple of months ago and did not get any blue. His recipe called for adding the PC & G to the milk and I suspect that these two overwhelm the blue. Your make seems to confirm this. We'll see how mine comes out.
Kern - This time around I didn't add PC to the mix after it was pointed out last time. I have only added PC via a spray bottle from around day 3 onwards for the camembert. It's now day 8 and no signs of PC growth yet. I had been hoping for signs of blue mould on the cambo before spraying it. I have given it a light spray this morning with PC though just in case the blue never comes. Fingers crossed.
Shane
Shane, my plan is to pierce on day 4 and spray the PC & Geo on day 5. I think that PC & G overwhelm the PR but are probably a lot slower out of the starting blocks. I made a classic Camembert about five weeks ago and did not see much until about day ten. So, I'm not surprised you haven't seen anything yet. I'll bet you get both the blue and white this time. ;)
Thanks Kern. I'll try and remain patient. :)
Shane
Shane, I used a 4% salt solution with 1/8 tsp. P.c. and 1/32 tsp G.c. and sprayed as lightly as I could with a cheap plastic spray bottle. It was probably more like a light stream than a spray. They were sprayed on day 7 and day 8, and then flipped once or twice a day after that. If I remember correctly, I started seeing white about 4 to 6 days after the second spray.
Thanks for the comments and cheeses, guys.
Larry
Thanks Larry. That sounds pretty close to what I've done. I don't have GC though at this stage, so it was left out.
Shane
Quote from: LoftyNotions on May 25, 2015, 03:24:05 AM
Shane, I used a 4% salt solution with 1/8 tsp. P.c. and 1/32 tsp G.c. and sprayed as lightly as I could with a cheap plastic spray bottle. It was probably more like a light stream than a spray. They were sprayed on day 7 and day 8, and then flipped once or twice a day after that. If I remember correctly, I started seeing white about 4 to 6 days after the second spray.
Larry, did you hydrate the PC & GC for a few hours before spraying? Caldwell states to do it 16 hours before spraying and that the mixture will last a couple of months in the fridge. However, her mixture consists of a teaspoon of salt and sugar in a quart of water - not a 4% salt solution.
Yes, I did mix the P.c. and G.c. the night before the first spray. Since mine only had to be viable for 2 days or so, I didn't worry about feeding them. Also, I vaguely remember Linuxboy posting here that sugar wasn't a very good food for adjuncts. Whatever he was recommending wasn't something readily available to me, so I've cleared those brain cells. :)
For my morge washes that need more longevity, after washing a cheese I wring out the gauze I wash with back into the stock solution. I believe Alp posted here that he stores his wash brush in his wash. I think this feeds and strengthens the morge.
Larry
I made up mine a couple of days before the first use and is stored in the cave. I'm still hanging out for the first sign of fuzz.
Shane