Today I made Neufchâtel cheese using the recipe here (https://cheeseforum.org/Recipes/Recipe_Neufchatel.htm) but as I started at noon and only had 10 hours I decided to try and accelerate that recipe by:
- Doubling the normal starter culture and using warmer temperature before hanging to accelerate the cultures' growth.
- Cutting the curd to expel more whey before hanging and thus reduce hanging time.
- Regular removal of drier curds from cloth wall while hanging to allow moister curd to expel whey faster and reduce hanging time.
As you can see it was not very successful.
MAKING - JUNE 8, 2008
- 12:00PM Poured 1 US gallon pasteurized homogenized store bought 1% cow's milk into stockpot on stove and added double normal, 10 ice cubes (~8 ounces/~200 ml) of Mesophilic Starter Culture (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=15.0).
- 12:05PM Diluted 30 drops of liquid vegetarian rennet (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=33.0) in ~2 ounces/~50 ml cool water, stirred to ensure fully diluted in water and immediatly trickled into milk while stirring.
- 12:10PM Warmed milk slowly to ~35 C/~95 F while stirring-whisking, covered and set aside to ripen-set.
- 1:30PM Good curd set, cut the curds and re-warmed to ~35 C/~95 F with stove, stirred once, covered to allow culture to work and flavour to develop.
- 3:30PM Re-warmed and stirred once, stockpot had lost 1 C/2 F in 2 hours.
- 5:00PM Most curds sunk to bottom, poured off whey into cheesecloth lined colander in sink, discarding whey. Stirred curds in cheesecloth as lumpy from warm whey. Tasted, no cream cheese flavor :(, yet, did not taste last time made Neufchatel (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php?topic=35.0) to compare with. Hung curds in cheesecloth bag, to gravity drain whey.
- 6:30PM Placed cloth with curds back in colander, scraped drier curds off of cloth and re-hang.
- 8:30PM Placed cloth with curds back in colander, scraped drier curds off of cloth and re-hang.
- 9:00PM Placed curds in bowl, added salt, garlic, paprika, black pepper, and dried parlsey, and mixed to homogenize texture. Still no cream cheese flavor and could not get texture creamy, instead lumpy like very soft cottage cheese.
- 9:10PM Place Neufchatel in a sealable food grade container and then in fridge to enable herbs to infuse their flavour through cheese overnight.
THOUGHTS
- Accelerating the cheese making process by doubling culture and warmer temperature and cutting the curd did not result in Neufchatel light cream cheese taste. Possibility that 1) Mesophilic culture-bacteria is less active at warmer temperature or 2) allowing whey to separate from curds changed the chemistry?
- Curds after warmer bath had to be stirred vigourously to try and make homogenous like cream cheese. Cream cheese should not be cut.
- Did using 1% vs whole milk previous time result in less cream cheese taste?
Recommendations, thoughts on what went wrong?
Three last pictures . . .
I'd agree that the higher temps probably killed off some of the culture.
The temps for the different cheese are to develop the culture flavour and or acidity, and some need longer and lower temps to do so.
Just my thoughts.
Yep, my aim was to accelerate a simple recipe, didn't work out very well, must think slow food!