I made this chevre 2 weeks ago and added a pinch of P. candidum to my regular recipe. It is covered nicely with white mold, but now I don't know what to do next. Should I wrap it and age like a Cam? My French cheese book shows all kinds of aged goat cheeses, but I don't know how long to let it go. Not even really sure what I'm expecting.
Any ideas/advice welcome.
Pam
I don't have any advice to offer but those sure look wonderful! It's too hot here for me to experiment with this sort of cheese but I intend to when it cools this fall.
A quick question: how did you buy your egg crate diffuser? Did you get it in individual sheets? Or was it a large (and expensive) pack?
Thanks!! And let us know how it tastes!
Kristin
I've been aging them in my converted fridge, at about 50F.
The egg crate is from a large sheet, sold as florescent light covers, from the home supply store. Then I cut them into pieces to fit the aging boxes.
Hey Pam,
That cheese looks nice. It is like the crottin recipe I use. If you like it a little stronger, I would wrap it and let it age in the fridge a bit more. But, I have found there is a fine line with these, where you go from good to over ripe fairly quickly. The aged crottin cheeses I have seen pictures of always has dry looking rind on it and it gets almost hard. But, anytime I have tried to let this cheese age it gets really smelly and inedible rather quickly (for me anyway). You could always try one now and see if you like the flavor and let the others age if you want to experiment with the taste.
Looks good now!
Bonnie
Quote from: mtncheesemaker(Pam) on June 28, 2010, 03:35:14 PM
I've been aging them in my converted fridge, at about 50F.
The egg crate is from a large sheet, sold as florescent light covers, from the home supply store. Then I cut them into pieces to fit the aging boxes.
Thanks Pam. I know where to get the egg crate. I've just always seen it in pack of, like 15....for $120 or more. Have you found them individually? Or in pack of 2 or 3?
Kristin
Thanks, Bonnie. I guess I'll just eat them at different ages and see how we like them. I've seen them in books where they look pretty hard/dry.
Kristen, I got mine at Home Depot; they are sold individually. Can't remember what I paid, but I'm thinking +/- 10 bucks. They're pretty handy.
I really want to try one that is aged with blue. I can't get my cheese cave fridge to get warm enough. sigh. I need to get one of those things that regulates it for you. :-[
FYI, I wrapped these goat cheeses at 2 weeks, let them age another week, then ate one. It was actually quite delicious. I'll definitely be making these again. Next time I'm going to try coating the outside with ash, as that apparently allow a longer aging period without too much acidification.
Hey those looks pretty neat Pam! Let us know how they develop. Might be a whole new cheese.
I will totally try this next time I make chevre! OMG it looks amazing! I also finally got the fridge right, I put a humidifier in it and bingo!
Pam, it seems that you have an almost-crottin here, or actually Valençay. Whgen they age they tend to dry a bit and become harder. The French sells them in a different shelf or box titled "Affine" (Crottin Affine, Valençay Affine, etc.) You can also expect other molds to come out. Put them in a container in the fridge to slow them down ...or wrap them with some of those fantastic grape leaves of yours after soaking the leaves in brandy
Here is something very similar I did last month. It's a basic Chèvre, to which I've added PLA and a little bit of PC and Geo. I wrapped half of them in sesame leaves too, but this is the un-wrapped version. This wild rind was fantastic and chewy - a bit like that Humboldt Fog rind but no ash. The PLA supplied the yellowish color, the funky grassy aroma and those tiny yeast-induced eyes
I do know for certain that goat cheeses age much quicker than cow's cheese. Pam and Yoav, both of yours look wonderful. But, Pam--please don't let him talk you into using all of your grape leaves--you are sending me a few on Monday! ^-^
Haha... Pam has some awesome grape leaves.
I was inspired to make this cheese because I love Bucheron. I didn't have the right size mold so made these pyramids. Here's a pic of one we cut last night, at 4 weeks old. Really delicious with a kind of light citrus bite.
Next I want to make some smaller ones like you posted, Yoav, wrapped in grape leaves. How long did you age them for?
(Now that I've learned about grape leaves, I won't be sharing! ;)HAHA.
Do not torture me, Pam--I just made Manchego yesterday that I want to wrap in your treasures! Please, please, please.
Looks perfect! The tiny ones I age 14 days or so. It's funny that they still need the same time for anzymatic activity as a large cheese but they do dry out (and gets covered with mold all around) much faster, so try to ladle them without cutting the curd to keep as much moisture as possible inside. I decided to drop the curd leftover from the tiny ones last time in a larger Pont-l'Évêque mold and was blown away - this accidental leftover curd cheese turned out to be this super-moist heaven; one of my best cheeses ever. (I added yeast that made it airy and fluffy with this rustic bready note). Trying to repeat that success now. I have to add that this was a fully lactic cheese, not semi lactic like Crottin, Valençay or St. Maure
Looks really good Pam! Creamy!
I made some like a st maure, think thats how it spelled, the curds are not right. They need to be cut, I used a little rennet. I have one more that needs to be molded.
Here are some pix of the St. Maure cheeses I made, as they ripen. One gallon of goat's milk made 4 cheeses ~8 oz each when they were fresh. I just used the Ricki Carroll recipe for Soft Goat Cheese using Flora Danica, and sprayed with P. Candidum & Geotrichum Candidum (4 to 1) in a weak brine solution that I stored in the fridge. I didn't innoculate the milk with the mold because I hadn't completely decided on herbs or mold :o I didn't cut the curds after it set overnight -- I just ladled and drained for a few days before spraying & flipping daily until the mold covered the cheeses.
Also, I wrapped the cheeses in cheese paper after a couple of weeks, because I had to go out of town. But they seem to have continued ripening just fine. They were aged in a mini-fridge set to 50 degrees.
Anyway, the pix show the progression of the ripening. The first pix is at 3 weeks, then 4, then 5 weeks. This week we'll eat the last one, and I hope the ripe part will have moved to the center. I really like how little work this cheese was to make!
I forgot to mention that they have each been completely delicious!
That is the most important detail! Congrats!
They look absolutely wonderful--congratulations!
MrsMarbles,
Your cheese looks divine! Very beautiful, and it's making my mouth water. I'm going to look again after I post this LOL.
~Laurie
Seems a bit more like a giant crottin; not so much a Saint Maure. Saint Maure is a log cheese with a straw running through it, its rind is ashed. Heck, add some ash to it and an ash streak in the center and you got yourself a Humboldt Fog : 8)
Hm, well that's the name of the recipe in Carroll's book, though not necessarily historically accurate.
Anyway, we had the last cheese last night, and it was wonderfully gooey. Really tasty. I highly recommend the recipe, whatever you want to call it, both for its ease and its wonderful taste. A great way to make extra soft goat cheese last a few weeks longer.
Looks like really Good St. Maure cheeses !
The final one looks wonderful--how long was the aging time at the last pic?
Yea, how long did you age that last one? How come it's turning gooey from the inside out? Interesting! I hope my comment about the Saint Maure wasn't annoying... you actually kind of made your own cheese which I think is awesome. Give it a name!
t's just the cheese recipe on page 184 of Ricki Carroll's book, as a variant of soft goat cheese. She calls it Saint Maure, but... "white mold ripened soft goat cheese" is kind of a long name to say over and over. A few pages earlier she mentions using Flora Danica for goat cheeses, so I was just trying to follow her instructions.
The recipe says that the cheese is ready in two weeks, but really it took about 6 weeks for the ripe part to reach the center. I think the pictures show a line where the ripe part is moving further inside with each week. Good thing we had four cheeses, so we could taste about one a week. Next time we'll know to wait longer... but it was very much worth the wait.
Well, what's interesting is that this is a mold ripened cheese but the center has ripened for you first (liquid). Surface ripened cheese would mature from the outside-in not from the inside out. As a matter of fact, most people find it challenging to stop the outside from over ripening too quickly before reaching the inside (AKA skin slip), so I wonder what happened there that your inside turned softer than the outside.
The shape of these semi-lactic cheeses tend to change the speed and matter in which they ripen. Valency, Crottin and Saint Maure are essentially almost the same cheese but their shape and maturation is different. 6 days are enough to develop initial rind but not enough to develop character in the paste. 14 days is optimal and no less than 10 days. 21 days and up is ripe and then they begin to get hard and crumbly, eventually ending up as grating cheese
Ditto on Yoav's observations, which is why I asked about the aging time. Your first pics look like a basic soft chevre--and the final ones have morphed into an inverted version in that the center is runny and the outside is intact. Mentors, please explain how this could happen--I like it!
I guess I'm baffled by the inside-out comment. Perhaps the photos don't show the ripening as well as I thought. It definitely ripened outside to inside.
The cheeses began as basic soft chevre, and then were sprayed with mold. Each week we could see the softer area move further toward the center, when we cut one open. In the pictures, there is the creamy area toward the outside and a firmer white center. There's a visible line in the pictures between the two areas that moved inward about 1/4" each week. There's a difference in the temps between the various weeks, and the last day it took me awhile before I took the picture, so that cheese is probably a bit warmer. Still the area just under the skin was soft and creamy, not gooey or runny.
We are referring to your 6-day old cheese on the later photos you posted. The inside clearly looks gooey. The outside seems soft and less moist. There was a thread here about this a few months ago, I forget what it was. I think Linuxboy or Francois replied with a good theory about it.