Toward real cheese

It has already been a few days since I made my first attempt at my dream cheese, that little wheel in red wax. There are no results yet because successful cheese takes about two months. Failing tends to go a lot faster- but while I suffered through a minor crisis already, I am still in the game. And before I forget the things I think I found out I better report. What follows is far from a complete recipe; rather, it's a collection of notes on this first attempt at a real cheese.

The initial steps are much like for rennet cheese: Start with  gallon of regular milk, let it get to room temperature, and add some starter. For the rennet cheese I used buttermilk, this time I used yogurt- mostly because it was older and needed to be used up. Let sit over night, then heat to 85°F and add 1/4 tablet of rennet dissolved in 1/4 cup of cold water. Let sit for another couple of hours after which the rennet should have gelled the milk into a curd. Then cut the curd into small cubes, just like for the rennet cheese.

Now the procedures get different. Rather than draining the whey off the curds immediately, slowly head the pot with curds and whey to 100°F while stirring almost constantly. That heating and stirring will take at least 15 minutes and should continue until the curds flakes have hardened and settled into pieces a like cottage cheese. Only then strain the content of the pot through a flour sack to get rid of the whey.

Following my instructions I added two teaspoons of salt next and worked it into the curds. The resulting mixture tasted rather salty but hey, I was just following instructions. Next I lined my cheese press with the flour sack and set up my cheapo cheese press. Over the next eight hours it was waiting and an occasional tightening of the clamp. I was surprised how little extra whey was draining but not overly concerned at that point.

When I removed the pressed cheese after eight hours it was way too soft and way too wet. Even a first timer like me could readily see that. Yet, I was still determined to stay with the program- which called for the cheese to be rubbed in salt. Except that cheese would not even stick together when I tried to rub. At this point it also occurred to me what must have happened: Little pieces of curd had clogged the pores in the flour sack almost immediately, and after that very little additional whey was able the drain from the cheese.

So far, so bad! This was obviously not going to work and my options were to give up or to improvise. I chose the second: I scooped the entire broken mess back into my cheese press, this time directly and without any lining. Not the cleanliest and most hygienic thing for sure but this was time for worry about bacteria. Besides with the cheese effectively double salted by now I doubted anything harmful to man would be able to live in there.

I pressed the cheese for another couple of hours and a lot more whey drained out. A little bit of the cheese managed to escape through the holes of the cheese press cylinder but this was really negligible. And when I removed the cheese for a second time from the press, it actually held together. I decided to forego the salt rubbing this time. The cheese would probably have held up but I figured the last it needed was any additional salt.

I just wrapped my cheese into a fresh flour sack, put the whole pack into a small bowl, and the bowl into the fridge. Since then, I have been checking it every day, replacing the wrap if it felt wet. They picture above shows my new pride as it looks now, after four days. I am waiting for the something like a rind to form which supposedly can take a week or two. Which is as well- after all, there is a lot of red wax I have to come up with before I can proceed to the next step!