Having lived in southern Italy in the early 1980's, I recently started a quest to reproduce the Mozz that I remember from 20 years ago :). So far the results have been very good as my technique has improved. Spin, cheese texture, flavor all work well. The only thing I am running into that I could use some advice on is when I do long pulls of the melted curd to make braids, etc. I get some small "rips" or "tears" up and down the strand. Acidity is right, I do a pre-test of curd before "spinning" the whole batch. My water temperature and curd temperature for the spin is at or above what they should be. The pull works very well, I just lose the smoothness somewhat for the long pulls. Any advice would be very much appreciated!! Thanks, Mike.
what culture are you using?
Good question. Just asking it makes me think that in going through my mental check list of what could be happening, I didn't even think about culture! I use the wacheese.com recipe of 1/4 cup yogurt and 1/2 cup cultured buttermilk per gallon milk. The yogurt is re-cultured (multiple times) from a supermarket off the shelf "Yogourmet" culture that contains L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, and L. Acidolphilus. I always make sure it is a strong/young culture. Until the last batch, the buttermilk culture was from butter made from naturally clabbered cream (no added culture). Last batch I used NE Cheesemaking Meso culture (says contains S. Lactis, S. Cremoris) because I could get it quickly at a local brew supply while I am waiting on some Abiasa culture from Glengarry (I guess I am moving up in the cheese culture world :)). I wanted to go with commercial culture because once in a while we would get "off flavors" from the natural clabber (though I wouldn't use it for the Mozz). All milk is from a couple Jersey/Brown Swiss crosses we have and it is used raw.
I read in the intro to the wacheese.com recipe about the ratio of rod and sphere shaped bacteria and that it was important, but I wasn't sure how the ratios translate into different outcomes of product characteristics/ quality?
Thanks, Mike.