I made a batch of Tomme using the Jim Wallace recipe from New England Cheesemaking. It's been sitting in my cheese "cave" for about the past week happily at about 90%+ humidity with me rotating it daily and watching for some problems - and nothing happening. So, I decided to go to an every-other-day rotation...
Oops!
(maybe?)
Today, the relative humidity went down to 82%, so I went to do the flipping and flipped out!!! There is a VERY VERY aggressive blue mold attacking my cheese!!!
The following two pictures are of what I saw. They are both of the same cheese. The first is with no flash. The second is with the flash forced on.
HELP!!???
I've got good news and I have bad news. The good news is that blue will show up on your rind unless you get good geotrichum coverage. That's just what happens. I reuse my bamboo mats from my previous cheeses that have geo on them (without washing!) and often just rub some geo from a previous cheese to get it going. But if you look at my reblochon ageing thread you will see that I got blue going on my rind because I didn't have the geo established. You need to keep an eye on it (flip your cheeses every day!) and do a wash with a 3% light brine to take the blue off. Everything will be fine, usually. Don't use a heavy brine (like the one you used for brining your cheese) because geotrichum is a yeast and doesn't tolerate salt well. If you wash with a heavy brine, you will select for blue mold, which can tolerate a lot more salt.
That's the good news. The bad news is that blue mold *loves* crooks and crannies in the cheese's rind. Geotrichum likes long, flat, gentle surfaces. Even tiny marks from the cheese cloth, or stippling from the holes in the mold when you were pressing can cause a problem. Your rind is not closed at all. You will *never* get the blue out. Unless your local blue is delicious (mine happens to be), I would say it's time for eating now. On the plus side, tomme is delicious fresh.
Natural rinds are tricky. The first thing is to have an absolutely smooth rind. The next trick is to let the cheese bloom white. Once it blooms white (or if it blooms blue), then wash it with a 3% brine. Then only wash it if it gets blue. But without the smooth rind, there isn't anything you can do.
Thanks for the advice.
I will try the brine wash today.
As to the knitting problem, I was wondering about that, myself. This recipe had me apply almost no weight to the cheese during pressing. I basically made two cheeses and the only weight was the one on top of the other. I flipped them over every thirty minutes or so, but both look about the same - and both are being attacked by the blues the same way.
I am wondering if I should consider another solution next time? Perhaps something else in the make process made it so the curds did not knit properly?
If you are doing a tomme de Savoie style tomme, the secret is to get the curds out of the whey and into the mold while the pH is really high (well over 6.0). Which recipe were you doing (Jim Wallace has at least 3 tomme recipes on that site)? My general advice would be to cut back on the starter culture, and possibly reduce the cooking time. When I'm doing a tomme, I cut the curds, raise the temp to 38 C over 30 minutes and then probably cook it there for only 15-25 minutes. Although all of my tommes so far have been slightly too moist :-) I have noticed that usually Jim Wallace's recipes acidify faster for me than he indicates, but it's hard to measure the amount of culture properly for the small cheeses I make (which is why I've moved to mother cultures).
OKay, MikeChar,
This cheese is definitely ruined. But I am hoping to learn from it. I took one of the smaller wheels, which was not aggressively blued, and cut it in half to do a taste. It was bad. Very sour! Almost more sour than a sour cream.
I am hoping that is another clue as to where I went wrong. Any ideas? Between the poor knitting on the edges, and the sourness, and suggestions?
Oh, as far as that wheel, it was consigned to the garbage. I will taste another one in a few days to see if the next one changes flavors, but I am pretty sure this whole make is going bye-bye...
:-[
I'm *really* sorry to hear that. I find when a cheese doesn't work out, it's like someone came by and shot one of your pets. It's really demoralising!
I had a feeling that the poor knit was probably due to pH problems. What culture did you use and what exactly was the recipe? Especially, how long did you cook the curd, how did you transfer it to the mold and how long did it sit in the mold before salting? It is just possible as well that your culture or milk got infected with a very fast acting bacteria. My dad has a yogurt culture that will go all the way down to about a pH of 4.8 in only 2 hours. That kind of culture is absolutely no good for cheese.
Thanks for the offer to hope. I view this as one of those stumbling blocks on the way to learning, so hopefully I will get better, and if this helps others NOT make the same mistakes, then so much the better! I do not have a good pH meter, so cannot provide that info. That is one of the things I intend to buy soonish. I did buy a temp/humidity meter a few months ago ... and as I mentioned before, my "cave" is a repurposed dorm fridge. :-)
So, here goes, in narrative form...
1130 - Put 3.75 gallons of whole milk on the stove to warm up (my largest stainless steel soup pot holds 4 gallons, and I need some space to be able to stir etc, so that's why I did not fill it to the rim!) The milk started out at 55 degrees. It is whole milk, bought from the supermarket. Stirred milk occasionally while it is warming up very gently since this is on a gas stove.
1325 - Milk reached 90 degrees. I added 1/4 teaspoon Flora Danica and 1/4 teaspoon Thermophilic Type C Culture. Let the powders rehydrate on the surface for a couple of minutes, and then stirred them in. Turned heat off. Let rest.
1430 - Temp came down to 88 degrees. Added Rennet and stirred for 1 minute. Let rest.
1508 - Cut Curds to about 1 inch cubes. Let rest for a couple of minutes and then cut again to a smaller size i accordance with the recipe.
1520 - Curds have sunk down and cannot be seen below the whey. Scooped out whey until I uncovered the whey. Replaced with water that I had ready at 130 degrees until I replaced the amount of whey (came up to the same point on the edge of the pot). Let the curds and whey rest for 5 minutes. Repeated this process three times until the whey reached a temp of 102 degrees.
1600 - (This step is immediately following the previous), I used three molds - One large one that held the curds from 2 gallons of milk (this is a Tomme mold with a follower) and two molds that I made from Chinese food containers that I poked holes into. I used them in the past for making Feta and they worked well. They hold a bit more than 1 milk gallon's worth of curds. For kicks and giggles, I weighed the wheels of cheese in the molds after I put them in, and at each time I flipped them. The beginning arrangement was with the large tomme on the bottom with the other two molds stacked on top of it in a pyramid.
Initial weights: Large Tomme: 5 Lb 12 Ounces First Small Mold 3 Lb 11 Ounces Second Small Mold 3 Lb 11 Ounces
After 30 minutes, flipped them over, so that Large Tomme became the top unit and then the two small molds. This did mean that the First Small Mold was in the middle position again.
Weight after 30 minutes Large Tomme: 2 Lb 3 Ounces First Small Mold 1 Lb 8 Ounces Second Small Mold 1 Lb 6 Ounces
Another 60 minutes, and flipped them again, to the starting position. Waited another hour and flipped them again. Another hour, and another flip. At 2000, I stopped stacking them, and put them side by side on the counter. The weights at this stage were:
Large Tomme: 1 Lb 10 Ounces First Small Mold 14 Ounces Second Small Mold 17 Ounces
Next morning I put all three wheels into a bring that involved 1 Gallon of water; 1 Lb of salt; 1 Tablespoon Calcium Chloride*; 1 Teaspoon White Vinegar. Brining went on for 8 hours, with me flipping the cheeses after four hours and sprinkling about a teaspoon of salt on the top wheel.
* - All the other recipes I've ever seen had me add the Calcium Chloride the the supermarket milk at the beginning. This is the first time I've ever seen it added this late in the process???
That night, wiped the cheese dry and they went into the cheese "cave". For the first 10 days, they were getting flipped daily. The surface was staying dry even though the temp of the cave was 50 to 52 degrees and the relative humidity was 90 to 93%. That was when I decided to stop with the daily flipping and go to an every-other-day routine. Wouldn't you know it, but the relative humidity started going down to below 90, to 85% the next day. When I checked it the day after... RH was at 83% and you saw the picture!!!
By the way, right now, my thermometer is showing the cave at 52 degrees and 74% RH. I am afraid to go check the big wheel to see how blue it is... but will pull it out to try a slice. :-[
It's probably bad... but oh well...
Would love to hear suggestions of where I went wrong!?
Thanks!
More information.
Went to the cave with the intent of dumping the two remaining wheels and was stunned by what I found. Picture below.
What you see is the Small Mold cut in half on top of the Large Tomme. The blue infestation is being completely overrun by the grey that I wanted! Oh wow!!!
I cut the small mold and tasted it. It tastes much better than the other one I tasted a couple of days ago. Not as sour - but still with a tang - somewhat similar to a goat cheese Chevre, but much firmer in structure. Not unpleasant actually. I cut off all the blue parts and did not taste any residual blue funkiness in the cheese paste that I did try. So, for now, I took the small mold, cut off all the blue (which took off all the rind) and put it in the cheese drawer in the regular fridge. The Large Tomme wheel went back to the Cheese cave to see what will happen next.
This cheese life is strange!!!
I have reached the end of the story on this make. How sad.
Over the past couple of days, the humidity level in my "cave" spiked to 99%, Temps also climbed from mid-40's to low 60's. Not sure what was going on so I went to it today, opened the door, and .......... whooooooaaaaahhhhh
WHAT IS THAT SMELL?????
Not sure what happened over the last 48 hours, but here are the horrible photographic results. The first is of the wheel from 10 days ago as it looked today. See how parts of it look like they burst off and it actually is oozing down the side?
I decided to be brave (or stupid, you pick!), and cut the wheel in half. Outside of the rind, the paste did not look too bad. The aroma around the rind was absolutely evil, but the paste was not. So, I even took a small taste from the center .... and quickly spit it out!
It was sour. Unpleasantly sour.
This time, everything went in the dumpster.
Any clues in any of this?
P.S. pH Meter was delivered today. :-) New batch will be started over the weekend. A)
Actually Tomme is one of the non fussy cheese to age in my opinion. The only thing you have to remember is to develop the rind in the beginning before letting the moulds take over. So what I do is dry them (I dry all my cheese in the warmer cave, 15-16C around 70% RH), I do this 3-4 days until the rind is dry. Then I put then into 90% RH and forget about them, I brush every week or so. Blues, greys, whites will come by, just brush them all. If you have well developed rind, the moulds will only be on the outside and it will add yo the character of the cheese.
Thanks for the advice. I will put another two liters together this weekend and see what happens. I have a few ideas that I want to try to improve things. And now that I have the pH meter, I will be taking frequent readings and - probably - post the make process and results on the board.