Second Fontina started today. Previous one was too hard and dry, but I ate it all anyway. Today I used the flocculation method for the first time. I have to say it was simple and I liked it, and I hope it helps with the texture of the cheese.
Also had much better temperature control because of another thread related to double boilers and controlling temperature.
Fingers crossed!
Fontina cut today
Looks nice. How does it taste? Did the rind dry out on you a bit or was that what you were shooting for? AC4U!
Fabulous taste. It's a natural rind, so that's what I was expecting. MUCH better than my first try.
Looks delicious, how much milk did you use?
Congrats. Rind looks like it dried out more than you might want--are you keeping your RH above 85%?
RH is only 74 but to get it higher I need to get to the other end of summer because it needs to be checked on every day
I agree looks good , the texture of the curd inside looks perfect so I think you hit the correct ph ...... small cheeses are hard to control the percentage of rind to the rest of the cheese from being too dry.
I agree with everyone hear that it could be a little dryer than normal but We do not know the size your cheese so it is hard to say how dry it really got
A 2 inch tall cheese that has a 1/2 inch dryish rind all around has 25% of the curd dry , a 4 inch tall cheese has only 12.5%
Look at any commercial cheese next time you are a good cheese counter and you will see that most have about a 1/4 inch or so of the rind dryness extending inwards . But that cheese will probably be 4 to 8 inches thick .
For your next cheese try keeping it in a plastic box that is about double it volume and control moisture by leaving the lid semi open and daily leaving more or less openness . The only down side to this is you get less cheeses into a fridge .
I leave you with a cheese for your efforts