So I made my first cheese with rennet and used the buttermilk starter I had made earlier in the week, with one gallon of 3.25% p/h milk and this is what I have! I used the https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1591.0.html (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1591.0.html) recipe, except for some reason when i molded it, i looked at another recipe and started pressing my cheese, so I pressed it all day long flipping at 30 min with minimal weight *maybe 2 lbs*, then 60 min with 8 lbs, then 4 hours later with 20 lbs. After pressing it weighs 1lb 4.5oz
I have no idea what cheese i've made, but it looks delicious.
First picture is of it in the brine, 200g of salt in 800ml of water.
2nd 3rd and 4th pictures are today, two days later drying in my mini cave.
Now, how should I age this un-named beast :)
Looks very nice porbably just get a very dense tomme if everything else went according to the recipe.
it seemed like it all went to plan, other than my mishap with the pressing idea lol
I think on sunday im going to take 1/4 of it off and try it, itll only be a week old but im having a SUPER hard time not just cutting it up already so I think if i sacrifice part of it, the rest will be able to age in peace
how resiliant should the rind be before vac packing or aging? mine has a little give to it now like a tennis ball, but not quite as stout, but it is still shedding water.
I don't know about resilantcy but it need to be dry. Are those bits of salt on the rind? If so you might want to wipe that off as it will keep leaching whey in the bagand be pressed into the cheese.
it was salt, yes, i did rub it all off as per your suggestion, then bagged it, im gonna check it in the morning and see how its doing
As long as the cheese was dry it should be fine. I don't know how long you air dried before bagging but if you see whey in the bag just dry off the cheese and rebag it. I leave a bit of extra plastic on the ends for this purpose. I have had a few that felt dry but weeped after bagging.
i did cut it open to try it today, and holy salty, ill remember not to dry salt the next one
Cheese is inherently salty and getting a good balance was my toughest challenge as a youngster because I am not fond of salty. Weird I know. Thankfully we now have the internet and this wonderful place to get ideas and information from. I hate to think of how many years I spent trying to figure this all out on my own! ;D
yea, this last make here yesterday will not be getting salted at all, so we will see how it turns out :) im not a huge fan of overly salty things either.
The brining should be sufficient unless mold gets out of hand which shouldn't if you watch it.
ok, so did this exact thing again, with pressing and all, same times as last time and am now drying it at room temp, around 15c and flipping every morning and night. not dry salting it. but its not slouching...its almost expanding from the top and bottom middle i am very worried i got a yeast infection of some sort, the sides are not bulging :(
Don't worry just wait and be patient.
lol ok, sorry im just sorta paranoid after my salt lick disguised as a wheel of cheese last attempt
LOL I uderstand. My 1st feta was the same way but then I think all commercial feta tastes like a salt lick too.
And you might want to steel yourself and wait at least a month or two before cutting into this one.
Patience, grasshopper. 8)
If you find yourself getting the urge to cut into it, make another cheese instead.
By the way, did you follow a recipe? If so, what? I think you didn't because you didn't have a name for the cheese you made, right?
Your cheese efforts look good so far.
-Boofer-
https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1591.0.html (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,1591.0.html) < that tomme recipe is what i followed and then pressed it like a cheddar before doing a quick-ish brine, now drying. so its a pressed tomme unless there is another name for it?
Quote from: Threelittlepiggiescheese on March 14, 2012, 01:06:04 AM
ok, so did this exact thing again, with pressing and all, same times as last time and am now drying it at room temp, around 15c and flipping every morning and night. not dry salting it. but its not slouching...its almost expanding from the top and bottom middle i am very worried i got a yeast infection of some sort, the sides are not bulging :(
It might not be swellling. I've noticed this on some of my cheeses, and what was really happening was the corner of the wheel shrinking faster than the center of the wheel, so the edges were drawing in and making it look like the top and bottom were swelling. I figured it out by comparing it side by side with a cheese fresh out of the press, and saw that my sides were shorter but my overall height was the same. I think it looks fine.
If you want a fast ripening cheese so you don't have to wait a long time to see how it came out, try a Caerphilly - you can eat them at 3 weeks. I use the 200 Easy Home Made Cheese Recipes make, which doesn't involve cheddaring. Also, check out JeffHamm's posts on Caerphilly.
my first thought was exactly that the sides were shrinking and the top and bottom was not yet as it wasnt drying, but then my imagination kicked in and went KABLAM! so yea, i thought id post and ask :) and answers i did receive :) thank you
Not to worry! Cheese really is a remarkable thing. Except for maybe the lactose droopy slip skin cheeses I've never seen a cheese posted that couldn't be eatten.
and i look forward to trying all sorts of one off creations :)
I'll bet you are! There are so many cheeses and so little time & $$$ to make them all. I have been collecting and translating cheeses (mostly hard Italians) for nearly 30 years so if you have something in mind between Pav, Ed, Francois and me we might have it covered.
Quote from: DeejayDebi on March 14, 2012, 05:08:58 PM
There are so many cheeses and so little time & $$$ to make them all.
You are completely right about that one! I have one day a week if im lucky and if i'm unlucky I have one day a month I can make cheese and gallon of p/h milk here is almost $5
Yeah I hear that! I am a weekender too if I am not busy with sausage or some catering thing. Store bought milk here is $4/gallon but I can get raw milk for $6/gallon and I prefer raw. The extra cream is wonderful. Hopefully get my walking papers today from the doctor so I can do something. This being still and no driving is MADDENING!
Yes Debi, but it gets you back on the forum more often!
Threelittlepiggiescheese I wouldn't worry about bulging or anything like that. WAY TOO EARLY to detect any yeast contamination and WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY TOOOO EARLY to give it any taste. It's totally wacky and out of balance. The lactic bacteria is still doing its job, succesive bacteria had not started yet, proteins and fats have not began to break down, mineral shift has not evened out yet (salt, moisture, calcium etc.) There is absolutely nothing that the cheese can tell you now; not even that it's too salty (because some of the salt create osmosis and then runs off the cheese with moisture). I usually tell people who just start out to begin with fresher, short aging cheeses like Crottin, Chaource etc. because the impatience and desire to have a taste of a first cheese it too strong and who can learn anything if you have to wait 2 months to judge what you did last time? The best way is to make one of these and as it ages make other short-term cheeses that you can taste and improve upon while this one ages.
I age my Tommes a minimum of 6 weeks. They are ideal at 2-5 months. There is one recipe I do for 5 months and the longer I've ever done was 9 months.
The best advice I can give you (and I have done *A LOT* of Tommes) is to watch for acidity. That's the number one killer of these cheeses and it usually happens within the first 30 minutes of making them (and you discover it months later, when you get a hard, brittle un-melty brick...).
Salt isn't just a flavorant in cheese. It helps create the rind that protects it from drying and becomes the medium for beneficial mold growth, it slows down lactic acid production. More importantly, it is an antiseptic that deters pathogenic yeasts, molds and bacterium (most of which cannot sustain at high salt concentrations, however most of the good microbes you want on your cheese actually do survive it). Another very important function of it is osmosis: It helps wick out the excess moisture in the cheese and drains the whey out of it. You can also use it to control some of the rind molds and toughness of the rind. Don't skimp out on it - proper salting is super important.
Salting shouldn't complicated. I personally only use brine if I make multiple or really large cheese or plan on re-using it for another make. Otherwise I find it fussy and wasteful (lots of salt, takes a while to dissolve in hot water but you need it to be cool before brining to it takes a while to chill. Then you need to balance its pH to match the cheese and add calcium to prevent mineral shift. On top of that you have to be there to turn the cheese in it and to take it out of the brine later so you need to plan your day around it). If you choose to brine it, you must do it right and brine it at the prescribed amount (fully saturated brine of 24% salt, cool at 55°F with calcium added and enough drops of vinegar to bring it to 5.5pH, at 1.5 hour per side -per Lb. of cheese at this size. 2 hours per lb. per side if it's over 5 lbs.).
Dry salting is the easiest thing in the world and it's very proper for Tomme. Many farmstead producers use this method too. For this cheese, do the following:
1. weigh the wheel (for example, 2200g)
2. calculate 2% of the weight in salt (per the above example, 44g of salt needed)
3. Divide the pile of salt to two halves. Dry salt the top of the cheese, turn cheese over dry salt the other side with the other half of salt. This will look like a lot of salt and if you are having trouble loading so much on the cheese, rub some on the sides of it!
That's all there's to it. This cheese should have 1.5% final salt balance and to get that, you need about 1.75% salt to attack it... we are using 2% because we account for the fact that in dry salting you always end up with some salt falling off the cheese or being sprinkled around it when you dry salt so there is a little loss there. You can reduce it to 1.75% if you don't like it too salty but really no less.
One last note on the subject: When you press cheese hard (as you did!) you want to brine it longer or salt it a bit more (cheddars which are pressed as hard as you did get their salt in the milled curd before they are formed). That's because it's more dense and less moist so it is harder for the salt to make its way into it and dissolve.
the first one i dry salted i probably hit more like 12% of the weight in salt, so that would explain the saltiness, but i want to try to forgo the salt on this one unless i see in the next day or two that its begging for it, for what it is worth through the saltiness of the last wheel I was able to taste what was similar to a cheddar style cheese flavour with a butteryness, so I am going to be extremely patient for this one because I want to see what a mature flavour would be for it.
What do you mean "forgo the salt"? No salt at all? I would strongly advise against for all the reasons I mentioned on top; rind formation, protection from contaminants and pathogens, too much whey and lactic acid activity etc. -not to mention the really terrible flavor of saltless cheese. (It's really awful). Just salt in moderation. You can go down to 1.3% if you really need to.
As for butteriness, my feeling is that you may have come across some concetration of butterfat. the type of buttery notes that you seek in cheese can't be noticed so early on because diacetyl production is still rather insignificant. The butterfat that you have tasted will break down and translate to the sharp notes of the cheese as it ages.
ok, its salted with 2% of its weight in salt, lets see what happens :)
Keep us posted!
What type of rind treatment are you doing? Natural? Washed? Dunked? Vacuum?
was thinking olive oiling it
I like olive oil but then I use it instead on butter on bread too. I think it works well and can be rather mild. Some other oils get rancid quickly. Seems a lot of them these days do. I don't know why. Don't use peanut oil, or canola oil they don't last on long aged cheeses.
yea i have some super nice first press cold pressed extra virgin olive oil
MMmmm great on bread with basil! Also for your cheese. ;)
oh yea! :D I make bread with 100% coarse ground whole wheat and that stuff is awesome to drizzle over the top of a slice of the bread right out of the oven
OOooOoooOOoooo I love bread! Maybe I will make bread today? That should be okay. I don't think I could hurt myself doing that. I will kneed carefully!
or if you are truly worried, let the stand mixer do the kneeding
That would work if I didn't have to crawl under the table and drag that monster out and throw it on the table. I thik kneeding would less comprimise my restrictions! I am not worried but my spies are! ;D
well, I wanted to update yall, my first cheese is still completely salted to the max, been letting it age hoping that somthing else would happen lol, i know fat chance, but my second cheese which i followed the same recipe again and also pressed, is coming a long beautifully! about 1 month old for it now :)
Nice Lookin and clean, When do we eat?? :P
i'm thinkin about waiting for the 2 month mark, maybe 3 for this one only because its progressing so well at the moment
It's looking great! Hope it stays that way.
i only oiled it once, was not moldy at all before, after oiling, it had some spots of mold pop up, extremely thin layer of evoo btw. so i stopped with the oiling and am just brushing it every so often now
Wow, nice effort!
Anxious to see the inside and read your tasting comments when you cut it open. Patience. ;)
-Boofer-
That is comming along nicely. You'll be in for a treat in a couple months, and it will be worth the waiting. Honest.
- Jeff
and here it is as of yesterday
Wow, that is looking nice! I am inspired. Please post a pic when you cut it.
absolutely i will
lil more flora on the rind :D gettin excited and patient for this one
Beautiful! What's the texture like? How hard is it?
WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT HAPPENED? Did I miss something? Did the good guys win?
to be honest, im still aging this one :) im waiting for the end of this month, been watching it somewhat, but been so busy getting the house ready for hte baby i havent had time to make cheese ><