Quick takes

So much to do, so little time left to write. Therefore, just a quick summary of the latest happenings in the chaos kitchen:

• I dried some sourdough by spreading it with a knife on a plastic bag and then let it sit for a day. Then I collected the dried up pieces into a small Ziploc container and put them into the freezer. The idea is to defrost them in a month time and test whether the reconstituted sourdough will be any good.
• My latest batch of new bread consisted of two loaves each of 25% rye and 25% whole wheat bread. The whole wheat dough was of great consistency and easy to work with. The rye dough was rather wet and impossible to knead: It just gummed up my fingers. Surprisingly, all loaves came out rather good, even the rye bread that I could I could not knead and that I finally just left to mold itself into the bread pans.
• I tried myself at another rennet cheese. I am wondering whether I am setting the curds at a high enough temperature because mine are not as firm as they look in pictures. Will try setting at a higher temperature next time.
• My cheese press was a disaster this time, leaking cheese big time and forcing me to repack the curds repeatedly. Maybe it's because the curds were too soft. Even if they were I believe my design could bear some improvement. Still thinking about exactly how.
• Did another batch of yogurt, with full fat milk but without milk powder. The result was rather soft and I had made sure the incubation temperature was as high as possible. It might still be worth it to live with softer yogurt in the future it that means I can cut out milk powder as a necessary ingredient.
• Tried the first two bottles of my second batch of beer. Not sure what to think because it is rather different from the first batch. It's not bad I think (it still officially needs a few days of aging) but I would like to know what accounts for the marked difference of the two batches when the recipes were almost the same.

Which was about it. So back to work now ...

My pink cheese

It has been two weeks since I started making an attempt at my very own red waxed dream cheese. Since then, the pressed cheese had basically been sitting in my fridge and growing the rind that my Internet sources had instructed me to wait for. And for the last few days, I have positively been antsy about my cheese.

Part of the reason for my antsiness was that I was not sure how much longer to wait for the next step. Some areas had indeed developed a yellowish layer of dry crust which I supposed was the rind. Other areas, however, were still white and were not showing any desire to ever be anything but white. To complicate matters my cheese started to crack at the edges, in exactly the spots that had developed the thickest of the crust.

The short of it I decided it was time to move on to the next stage which meant --- waxing my cheese. Which obviously brought up one question that I had not given too much though before: Now what do I wax it with? Sure, there are plenty of places on the Internet that will gladly sell you cheese wax but I did not see myself sinking like $20 (once shipping and handling is figured in) to wax a single cheese, then possibly decide I have had enough of that and sit on a pile of unused cheese wax for the rest of my life.

The local Walmart offered paraffin for canning and other household uses, and candles. While the candles came in all sorts of colors (like fire engine red) I decided against it. After all, there was no telling what else might be in that wax and it could well be that the stuff that makes candles smell good could also make stomachs hurt. So the paraffin it was- it was much cheaper anyway.

It also was transparent, and I specifically wanted a red cheese. Luckily, the kids of one of my buddies was able to help me out, and the solution came in form of a bright red crayon, straight out of their art box. It was specifically non toxic. And if parents aren't worried about their kids inevitably eating those crayons, I wasn't going to worry about that crayon around my cheese. I was in business!

The actual waxing was easy enough: Heat the paraffin in a small (but wider than the cheese) pot and melt and stir the crayon in. Obviously, the mix has to be hot enough to be liquid but otherwise only hot enough. Some of that wax will likely splatter on skin at some point in the process and if it does, hot feels better than really hot. Once the wax was liquid and all mixed up I first dipped the top into the cheese, immediately pulled it out and let it dry. Then I turned the cheese in my hand and did the same with the bottom of the cheese. I repeated both top and bottom a few more times to build up a bigger layer of wax.

This left me with a narrow uncovered strip of cheese along the sides. I guess one solution would have been just to dip the sides, one section after another until I got around. I decided to use a paint brush (unused!) instead. It worked very well indeed though this was the point when I discovered you don't want your wax too hot. Anyway, my cheese soon had a solid hard layer of wax all around it. The only problem? Well, it wasn't red:

Obviously, that single red crayon had not quite had the effect I had been hoping for. I guess I could have kept dipping my cheese into the was to build up a bigger shell but it was obvious my cheese would never be fire engine red. So how would I fix that the next time? Well, one possible solution would be to throw more crayons at the problem. Though I was extremely hesitant of raiding the kids' art sets of what remaining red they might have in there. And I don't think you can buy red crayons without building a stock of blue, yellow, and other useless colors as well.

Or maybe I can score a lipstick from someone? I suppose there must be tons of them that are no longer fashionable on lips but would still look great on my cheese. And surely they are non toxic as well, or at least I really hope so. Food coloring might help as well though I am not sure if it dissolves in wax and can withstand the heat without breaking up.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I do want to first find out how this cheese works out before waxing any additional ones. And that I won't know for two more months if I am to believe my Internet sources. If I have the patience to wait that long that is ---

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!

First rennet cheese

With labneh, and quark conquered I decided it was time to slowly move toward real cheese. Not one of those huge wheels in red wax that are sometimes on display in the stores of course, at least not yet :-) Rather, I would make a simple soft cheese, very similar in consistence to the labneh and quark I had done earlier. After all, you got to start small and work yourself up.

It turned out I had the necessary equipment and ingredients already, though one of the ingredients required a little preparation. Because, for real cheese the milk is not curdled by bacteria as in yogurt or buttermilk. Rather, it uses "rennet", which is an enzyme, and which is not easy to find in regular grocery stores. It is readily available online though, and some home brew stores carry it conveniently as well. I have also been told that many of the ethnic stores have it as well, but had no necessity to verify that. Rennet should cost about $7 for ten tablets, and each tablet will curdle up to five gallons of milk.

So here are is the recipe I following making my first rennet cheese:

• Equipment:
  A pot with lid, big enough to hold a gallon of milk. I just used the bowl of my slow cooker
  A big knife; its blade has to be long enough to cut through the milk all the way through the bottom of the pot once it has curdled.
  A flour sack; available at department stores for about a buck a piece.
  A bowl to collect the whey when it drains out of the set curd.
  A ladle to spoon the curd from the pot into the flour sack.
  Fridge space to suspend the flour sack with the curd in it for draining. The dripping bowl has to fit under it.
  
• Ingredients:
  Milk, one gallon,
  Homemade buttermilk, 1/4 cup, I read yogurt works as well,
  Rennet, 1/4 tablet,
  Salt, 2 teaspoons should do (though I used 3).
  
• Get the gallon of milk to room temperature, by letting it sit on the counter or by warming it with warm water in the sink. We are shooting for 65°F though in my case I wound up closer to 70.
  
• Put the milk into the pot and add the buttermilk. Stir. Let sit for about two hours. The goal is not for the buttermilk to turn the milk but to achieve some slight acidity. The rennet needs that acidity to do its thing.
  
• Dissolve the quarter tablet of rennet (I broke up the tablet with a big knife) in 1/4 cup of water. The mixture may look cloudy but not undissolved pieces of the tablet should be left.
  
• Add the rennet solution to the pot . Stir again. Now put the lid on, move the pot out of the way, out of the light but still at room temperature (nominally,  65°F, my place was warmer) and forget about it for the next 12 hours. It must not be disturbed.
  
• After 12 hours the milk should have set into a soft curd. If it hasn't let it sit another 12 hours. Even if it has set you can still let it sit for extra time. That was the case with me, I had to go to work.
  
• Once the milk really has set into a curd, cut it with the big knife, from top to bottom, cuts about 1/2 wide. When done do it again, at a 90° angle.
  
• Line the dripping bowl with the flour sack and ladle the cut curd into the bowl. In the end, just pour the leftover whey and little curd pieces remaining in the pot over the curds in the flour sack.
  
• Suspend the flour sack in the fridge so it drains its whey into the bowl placed blow the flour sack. The first couple of hours it will drain rather rapidly and it may be necessary to get rid of some of the collected whey.
  
• After 24 hours of draining the cheese is ready. Remove bowl and flour sack from the fridge. Preserve or dump the whey, then empty the flour sack into the bowl.
  
• Add the salt. The recommended amount is one or two teaspoons. I used three. While I still made great cheese I now recommend one or two teaspoons as well.
  
• Work the salt into the cheese. I just used my hands. It worked but the cheese proved rather clingy. I will probably try a hand mixer the next time.
  
• The cheese is ready. Transfer into a storage container (my cheese just filled a quart size Ziploc container), keep in the fridge.

And that is it. The final product will be about a quart of something that very much resembles cream cheese. I got a quart container of it, for ingredient costs of about $3.30. It tastes great! A tad salty maybe (due to my own fault) but still better than cream cheese I would buy from the store. So, while this was a labor of love it was a great deal as well. Something I might even keep doing- except- my eyes are still set on those big red waxed wheels of cheese I sometimes see at the store...