I'm making Traditional Cheddar (Ricki Carrol's recipe). When it says to allow the curds to set for 20 min., I took that opportunity to do chores and didn't make it back in until 35 minutes. Will that have an effect on the cheese? If so, how?
They become moister and more acidic (15 mintes doesnt really effect acid)
Since your cheddering and pressing the XXXX out of it it doesnt really mater.
Your good to go.
Not really sure from your post at what point those 20 minutes should have occurred; was it 20 min between culture and rennet? 20 minutes after cutting the curd? 20 minutes during the cheddaring and stacking?
The worst case scenario is to over acidify the curd which will result in acidic cheese that doesn't mature well. It will be brittle, chalky and dry and never reach proper aging; tastes sour. Depends at which stage you let them sit too long, they can be too dry (after cutting, they drain whey) or too moist (before cutting, milk casein grows membranes that trap moisture in, which curd cutting isn't enough to get rid of)
and you will definitely have more issues with the curd knit during pressing.
Though even in very dry versions of Cheddars or let's say cheese like Cantal/Cantalet you get good knotting in spite of having the curd stacked, broken, milled, pre-pressed, then in the following day broken/milled again, and pressed again. At that point it is a day old and quite dry.
Hi Judy.
Looks like the boys already took pretty good care of you here, so I'll just go ahead and throw a plug out for flocculation. If you do a search on this term and read up on what it is, it will not only answer your question but expose a great technique that the pro's here use and recommend.