CheeseForum.org » Forum

I'm happy to report that I have *finally* come up with a cream cheese that I love the best!  I did have to work hard at it, and lost count of the number of trial batches I've concocted.  It was hard to find advice about it on the internet (this was prior to finding this forum) so felt I was on my own.  It took me a while to figure out the different cultures (I still haven't figured them all out yet but am getting closer) to get the flavor and texture I was looking for.  I've got all this abundant sweet Jersey cream to work with so persevered till I finally got it.  Of course, taste and texture are all personal preference!

The first batches I worked with were with all cream and C101 culture.  Texture was OK but hard when cold (like butter) and the taste was too bland.

Then I worked with cream/milk combos with C101 and didn't like the texture (sometimes grainy?).  The C101 recipes were working with temps starting at 86 degrees F and ripening at 72 degrees, and I sometimes found the cream leaking through the draining cloth with temperatures that warm.  Taste still too bland.

The next stage was discovering Flora Danica (FD)!  What a find!  Not only buttery flavor, but some gas production that made the texture a little fluffy!  But it also had a *sour* note (maybe too much acidity?) and I was looking for a slight *tang*.  I also discovered the "Swiss style" recipe in Home Cheesemaking where ripening and draining temperatures are at 65 degrees.  That really worked well with my cheesemaking environment.

Finally, somewhere in my research I discovered Aroma B with it's advertised gas producers, some buttery flavor, and a slight tang.  Couldn't wait to try it and I was not disappointed!  The texture is really great...it's a firm cheese but easily spreadable right out of the frig, with a nice flavor that is a bit milder than FD but it is good and the tanginess is not sour.  I also backed off on the cream a bit, with 1 part milk to 3 parts cream...and I think it would still be great backing off a bit more.

So, that is my cream cheese recipe (I can write the specifics down if anyone is interested) and I hope these experiences will help others that are looking for cream cheese results other than what they are getting currently.  Take-home message is keep trying different things!

A final note...I went to make more cream cheese last week and accidentally put twice as much culture in as the recipe called for!  I was fearing it would ripen all too quickly and become a sour mess, but guess what, it didn't.  I monitored it with pH strips all along the way and it progressed pH wise in the same amount of time as in the batches with the correct amount of  culture.  I can't figure out why this would be.  The only difference in the final result is that the buttery and tangy flavors were more pronounced.  --Susan

PS--Of course the final chapter in this story is that I learned how to make bagels!  Homemade bagels fresh out of the oven with fresh homemade Jersey cream cheese is pure heaven...

Definitely interested in specifics :-)  Also it is super interesting about adding twice as much culture and having the pH drop at the same rate.  I have often wondered about that...

I, too, would be interested in your recipe specifics! (Ingredients, times, temps, etc.)

Thanks!

Rich

Specifics:

Original recipe "Swiss Cream Cheese" from Ricki & Robert Carroll's book Cheesemaking Made Easy, 1982.  Forwarded on in the 3rd edition of the book, renamed Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll with the recipe renamed Swiss-Style Cream Cheese.  Adaptations made by me noted below.

1 quart pasteurized heavy cream (I use 3 cups cream, 1 cup 1% milk which may translate overall to half-and half?)

1 packet direct set mesophilic starter or 2 oz. prepared mesophilic starter (I use Aroma B mesophilic starter at 1/8 teaspoon per gallon which equates to 1/32 teaspoon per quart) (except when I accidentally double it  )

1 drop liquid rennet single strength diluted in 2 tablespoons cool unchlorinated water

2 teaspoons cheese salt

Warm cream/milk to 65 degrees F.  Add starter and mix thoroughly.
Add diluted rennet and stir gently with up and down motion for 1 minute.
Cover and let ripen at 65 degrees F. for 24 hours.

Pour half of the curded cream into a colander lined with butter muslin.  Sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt.  Pour remainder of curd into the colander and sprinkle with remaining salt.

I let this drain at 65 degrees in the colander for 1-2 hours.  Then hang in the muslin for up to 12 hours.  I speed the process up by scraping the bag and mixing every 2 hours or so, for a total of 7 hours (but then again our RH is about 20% and our draining times seem reduced compared to most recipes I have seen).

If the curd is still soft, then press at 10 lbs. for 4-6 hours.  Sometimes I press for an hour or so but the last time I made it, I did not press at all and it firmed up very nicely in the frig.  I have started to test the whey at this stage with pH strips and it seems like it is "done" when the strips read 4.7.

With my Jersey cream it yields about 14 oz. or about 2 cups volume.

Please let me know any thoughts/results you have with using this recipe?  And of course any improvements you may come across along the Cream Cheese Improvement Journey.  And mikekchar, if anyone can figure out why doubling the culture did not reduce the acidity timing, it would be you!  Looking forward to hearing your explanation....Susan

Quote from: Susan38 on March 21, 2019, 03:23:45 AM


Please let me know any thoughts/results you have with using this recipe?  And of course any improvements you may come across along the Cream Cheese Improvement Journey.  And mikekchar, if anyone can figure out why doubling the culture did not reduce the acidity timing, it would be you!  Looking forward to hearing your explanation....Susan

It's probably due to pH being a logarithmic scale. A drop from pH 6 to pH 5 means the amount of acid present has increased tenfold. Two pH points difference mean a 100 fold change and 3 mean 1000 and so on. If you double your culture, even if you assume that doubles the acid, the difference would barely be readable with pH strips. Another way of saying it is that pH strips are only a very rough guide to the amount of acid present, but they will catch really drastic errors.  Fortunately, for most cheesy purposes, a very rough guide is all that is needed.

Hmmm.... Interesting point.  Random googling suggest the doubling time for the bacteria we're interested in under ideal conditions is between 30 minutes and 3 hours.  I'll bet that the addition rates are designed to get you to maximum cell count in 1 or 2 doublings, so yeah, it's gong to have minimal impact except at the very beginning.  So under pitching is a potential problem for cheese making but probably you can over pitch to your hearts content with no issue at all.

Thank you, Susan!

Rich

Thanks for the recipe Susan!  Curious, are you using food grade lye in your bagel recipe?

Susan, I've got a batch of cream cheese going based on your process that you posted above....will let you know how it turns out!

Quote from: TravisNTexas on March 21, 2019, 04:08:21 PM
Thanks for the recipe Susan!  Curious, are you using food grade lye in your bagel recipe?

Travis, I'm not Susan, but thought I'd chime in......when I make bagels, I just use dry malt extract (available from your homebrew supplier) and get great color, with the right amount of crustiness to the outside of the bagel (I use it when I make pretzels, too):



Rich

Hello again!

Well the pH/acidity explanation with double culture makes sense, although it kind of blows a hypothesis I had out the window.  With the high acid C101 culture, when I follow recipes for it my cheeses come out overly acidic, but when I back off by 1/2 they come in pretty close to desired.  So I was thinking this would be the case for all cultures.  But maybe since the Aroma B is a more moderate acid producer, the difference may not be as dramatic.  Of course it seems that the answer to all of my questions thus far is always "get a pH meter".  But it is a bit fun to speculate what is happening when not all of the data are available.  Thanks for giving a think on this.

As for bagels, I am just a newbie at this and simply made dunking in plain water then baking and they came out very good.  Not as well browned as these in the picture, and perhaps not as chewy but they did have a pretty decent chewy texture.  I'm probably using different flour (90% whole grain heritage wheat, unifine processed) than you are, which produces some good, unique results but different I would think as compared to using white bread flour.  I'm sure almost anything is good smothered in homemade cream cheese!

Good luck with trialing my newfound recipe; I hope it turns out to your liking!  --S.

Quote from: Susan38 on March 21, 2019, 09:09:26 PM
Hello again!

Well the pH/acidity explanation with double culture makes sense, although it kind of blows a hypothesis I had out the window.  With the high acid C101 culture, when I follow recipes for it my cheeses come out overly acidic, but when I back off by 1/2 they come in pretty close to desired.  So I was thinking this would be the case for all cultures.

Well you got me doing some more reading and I looked up doubling times. I found various data, some say as low as 26 minutes others go as far as 2 1/2 hours. And i found out about something called lag time. Suppose you have a culture with a long doubling time, a longish lag time and you let your milk acidify for 2 hours. Under these circumstances the bacteria would be stuck in lag the whole time, there would be no increase in bacteria numbers, and acid production would be constant with time.  Doubling the dose would simply double the amount of acid produced, which would only shift the pH by 0.2 or 0.3. If such a cheese were pressed, it would exit lag and start reproducing shortly after pressing began, resulting in a rapid shift in pH until the bacteria either ran out of food or hit the pH limit somewhere around pH 4.6.
     Now if we change to the fastest reproducing bacteria, lag time will (I think - check this if you can) be much reduced, division will start during ripening, so you should see a modest acid production for about fifty minutes followed by a population explosion. Acid production could even complete before you get it in the moulds. Doubling the dosage of this bacteria would still result in a small pH difference at the end of ripening, but it might be the difference between 5.1 and 5.3 instead of the difference between 6.2 and 6.0
    So fast or slow, a doubling of the initial dose results in a barely readable difference, but changing to a fast culture makes a huge difference in pH at the end of ripening, and can even determine whether most of your acid is produced in the pot or in the mould. In the fast case, it's possible that acidification would finish in the pot, and you should have the same very low PH over a broad range of doses.
   I have assumed several numbers here. Different recipes and methods would change things, so now you know just enough to be a properly dangerous mad scientist!

Lenomnom--

I thought I was done thinking about this subject till I read your last post, which led to me looking up my brief make notes on the cream cheese batches, and wanting to speculate further (in a simplified way...not quite up to being the mad scientist yet!    )  I was remiss not to consult my notes in earlier posts.  While the ripening and draining times were the same for both batches with similar end results (except for more flavors in the second batch), there WERE some pH differences along the way (but up only for speculations since only test strips were used and monitoring times were not duplicated).

Batch #1 (proper culture amount) pH post ripening pre-draining was around 6.0; 4 hours into draining was 5.0, 6 hours into draining was between 4.7-5.0, and 7 hours at final drain point was about 4.7.

Batch #2 (twice culture amount) pH post ripening pre-draining was around 5.0 (AHA! we might say); but oddly enough it remained at this level 3 hours into draining and did not reach 4.7 until final drain point at 7 hours.  We can't know more as other responsibilities precluded me from monitoring this batch as much as I wanted (don't you just hate it when that happens; how annoying).

Anyway, your notes about lag times and such hit home as I had been wondering about that....what all those little critters are up to as we wait patiently for the cheese magic to happen.  Your first scenario totally describes what happened in Batch #1.  (Who knows exactly what happened in Batch #2; maybe the critters ran out of steam during draining; but anyway it had a happy ending).  And your second scenario describes what has been happening in my first semi-hard cheeses.  So thanks for taking the time to research and explain!  Much appreciated.  --S.

In batch #2 you reached the pH endpoint within errors of measurement. The cheese had the maximum possible acid, and the bacteria reacted to the very acid environment by packing up and going home. Well the acid makers did anyhow. Any remaining active strains would have to be quite acid tolerant, and they would be the ones responsible for aging. The hold at pH 5.0 doesn't fit the model well, and I would guess that the bacteria were busy making acid, multiplying and exhausting one of the several buffer salts that exist in milk in some quantity.

Susan, thanks so much for posting your process/recipe!  I just packaged up about 1/2 gallon of cream cheese (made from a gallon of whole milk), and the texture and flavor are perfect!  I ended up using Flora Danica as that's what I had on hand, but very happy.

Thanks,
R

Rich,

I'm so glad it turned out well for you!  I'm curious about what kind of milk you used, as I know they can all act differently with the same recipe.  With the Jersey milk I'm using, the Aroma B produces even a bit more "fluffy" texture than the FD, so if that's what you're after you might try it sometime when you get the chance.

Thanks for reporting back.  And thanks for giving me my first "cheese", so exciting not to have that "zero" lurking under my name anymore! 

PS--at some point later in time I will be asking you more about your bagel recipes.

Susan