Hi all!
I'm getting my feet wet with starter cultures, and I purcheased a generic one to try on a few soft cheeses. The recipe I have to make the solution from it instruct as the first step to heat the milk up to 90C and to keep it there for 10 minutes.My question is: can I use any kind of milk for the solution? For example something that is not really high quality?As I understand it, this process kills everything so that the culture can take over and spread, feeding on the sugars in the milk. Am I correct?
Thanks!
When you say a meso starter solution, do you mean a mother culture. That would be skim milk that is in a sterilized jar. You can use this for instructions: https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/cheese/making-keeping-mother-cheese-culture/ (https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/cheese/making-keeping-mother-cheese-culture/)
The meso culture grows on the sugars in the skim milk, eating up the lactose, and multiplying.
I wouldn't recommend using less than excellent milk because whatever is not excellent will be used in your many cheeses, so why take that risk.
Thanks! It makes sense in fact using only excellent milk, but I wasn't aware of the skim milk instead of the whole one. That article was very helpful, since I was about to use the whole milk I usually reserve for making cheese.Also, seems like I need to practice lots of extra care not to contaminate the culture.
You're welcome.
I liked your signature line, "Please halloumi to introduce myself", I had a little chuckle, thanks.
When I make a mother culture to be used the next day I use powdered milk , even less chance of adding something unwanted .
*Buttermilk novice here* ::)
Hi, I am looking into making my buttermilk at home. I have made the acidic version (milk + lemon juice / white vinegar) and think it's OK, but I'm heard
that buttermilk made with a starter culture is much tastier.
Can anyone recommend any places where I can buy a good buttermilk culture? And does anyone have any tips when making buttermilk?
Thank you!
You can just add store butter milk to milk and it will make butter milk. Use about 1-2% of the milk volume. If you want dvi culture get flora Danica or probat 222 (basically the same from different manufacturers)
I've had good luck with https://cheesemaking.com/collections/starter-cultures-for-cheese-making/products/buttermilk-starter-culture-for-cheese-making.
Susan
I've actually made a buttermilk culture from cultured butter before even. If you find "cultured butter" or "Normandy butter" (or I've also heard that "Irish butter" is also cultured), take 2 tablespoons and put it in a half liter (pint) of milk. Bring up the temp to about 32 C (90 F), until the butter melts. Pour it into a sterilised canning jar and put on the lid. I use one of those spring loaded flip top canning jars, but any canning jar will do if it is sterilised. You can heat sterilise it (make sure it cools down before you use it), or sterilise it with other means (I use iodophor and then rinse, but you can use bleach if you know how to do it -- don't guess if you don't!). Hold the bottle at room temperature for a day or so. Eventually it will look like yogurt. Open the top every once in a while just in case the culture they are using is gas producing -- you don't want to make a grenade :-). Because there is only a small amount of live culture in the butter it may take up to 2 days.
Or you can buy buttermilk in the store (if you can find it) :-). I highly recommend buying it if you can, because there are lots of ways to screw up culturing from cultured butter. Not that not all butter is cultured. Unless you live in Normandy (or Ireland, apparently), the vast majority is not cultured. It will be specially labelled if it is (and probably more expensive). One other quick warning: don't do this unless you are confident in your ability to sterilise your equipment properly. You are building up very small amounts of cultures, so if something else gets in there, you could easily be build up *that* instead. Your goal is to keep the bacteria count down for everything else *except the mesophilic culture* to as close to zero as possible. So use *new*, unopened, pasteurised milk. Use *new*, unopened cultured butter. Open the butter and don't let it touch anything except the spoon you will use. Sterilise the spoon. Etc, etc. It's not so hard, but you have to be really anal about everything. "Good enough" can make you sick :-)
I've made cheese with this before and it was really nice.
If you want to make a culture from scratch , and want to sure about safety before using it just culture the culture daily for a week or so , the good culture will out compete the bad because of the ph drop each time . Most things that are bad for us do not survive long below 4.5 ph .
Now that does not mean you will have a good tasting culture