Herbed Cheddar Cheese-Making, Part 1

Now that we've made a couple of batches of mozzarella cheese, I was ready to try something a little more challenging. Cheddar, anyone?

We assembled the ingredients and then I had to heat up the milk to 90 degrees. Half of a gallon was in the freezer, so it's a little bit like melting an iceberg. The other half gallon was slightly sour, which I believe will only add personality to the cheese.

Once it hit 90 degrees, we added the calcium chloride and the mesophilic bacteria. Then we let it sit for about 45 minutes before heating it up a little more and adding the rennet.

It curdled really quickly! Then we let it sit again for a while. After this, we drained the whey off and hung the cheese to drip dry for about an hour.

My husband came up with this contraption. He's a genius!

After it dried, we broke it into "walnut-sized" pieces (I didn't know what size a whole walnut is; James said that they were bigger than pecans, but that didn't help much) and then added salt and some awesome herb mix James has. It smells delicious!

At this point, though, I'm not understanding even a little bit how this is going to form into a block of cheese. It's bits. What gives? Well, first, you put 10 pounds of pressure on it for about 20 minutes. This was kind of awkward, because the mold is both circular and it tapers (or, as James tells me, conical). So he jury-rigged this:

That's ten pounds of pressure via water! After the 20 minutes, we had to do 20 pounds of pressure for 24 hours! So then James rigged up this:

After it fell over once and gave our cabinets a nice rinse-down, we put the whole contraption back in the sink inside one of those five-gallon "Homer" buckets from The Home Depot.

This sat for 12 hours, then I turned the cheese over and it sat for another 12 hours. Because we didn't have a way to put pressure on the disc very evenly, it came out oddly-lumpy-shaped. But here was the result, and it's pretty much a block of cheese!

It's also pretty bland, at the moment. Here's what happens: It is sitting out for 3-5 days until it forms a skin. Then we might just wax it. I'll have to get some food-grade wax first, but apparently that's the best way to age this stuff. Then we age it for, ideally 6 months. SIX MONTHS, PEOPLE!! I'm hoping this is some dang awesome cheese that we'll be enjoying for Valentine's Day!

Cheesemaking, Part 2: Mozzarella!

When we made the ricotta cheese, it became obvious that if we wanted to make any other (harder) cheese, we'd need to find a way around homogenized milk. As if in answer to this need, within the week, there was a notice on a homeschool board that a raw milk co-op was beginning! (I'd asked a local friend about buying milk from her, or rather buying containers that she might fill with milk if so inclined, but her cows were both just about to give birth.)

We joined the co-op and have LOVED the milk so far. We made sour cream and I've been finding as many ways to utilize the two gallons a week we buy as possible. It's interesting, how strict the rules are for selling raw milk in Texas. We have to purchase it there on site; they can't deliver. Fortunately, we have a co-op driver who picks it up so I don't have to drive to Dallas. But it seems like it should be a lot easier than it is.

Anyway, James went to Austin Homebrew yesterday and picked up, among beer brewing supplies, a mozzarella-making kit that was only $5 and will make four "batches" of cheese. So this morning, we tried it for the first time.

It took a whole gallon of milk!

While I started heating the milk, James dissolved a rennet tablet in water, and then also some citric acid and calcium chloride in another bowl of water.

We added the calcium chloride and citric acid when the milk was at 55 degrees. Then, when it hit 88, we added the rennet. The magic began almost immediately.

Curdles!

Pre-cheese!!

Side note: James appears not to have been a huge fan of taking the labels off of things before he met me. Once you heat up and cool down cookware several dozen times, those labels just don't want to come off. If this is among the most annoying of issues we ever have... ;)

Next, we had to kneed then reheat (in the microwave), and kneed and reheat the cheese a few times.

Finally, we added some "cheese salt" (read: salt repackaged and up-priced). The finished product:

YUMMY!