mmm....cheese

Homesteading is rather slow during the winter. All we have to do is sit here, mend clothing, eat pemmican and biscuits, and slowly burn through all the firewood that we chopped this summer.

Ok, thats just how I imagine it would be, but things have been a little slow around here in terms of post-worthy activities. I do, however, have a food-making related experience to share!

For christmas Jaime and I received a cheese-making kit. We finally got around to making some of it superbowl weekend.

Yes, thats me stretching some mozzarella cheese! The basic process for making mozzarella is to add citric acid and rennet(an enzyme originally extracted from veal stomachs, but now collected from bacteria) to a gallon of milk. That causes it to curdle, and separate into the curds (semi-solid protein clumps) and whey (semi-clear) liquid. After that, the curds are separated out and then heated and massaged until it becomes solid-ish. It only takes an hour or so to do.

The first attempt I strictly followed the instructions, but it didn't curdle nearly as firmly as they showed in the picture, even after waiting 4 times as long as I was instructed. Rather than just giving up, I used cheese-cloth to try to squeeze out as much whey as possible and hopefully only be left with good curds. That seemed to work since it got much more solid. I then stretched and worked the curds into a cheese-like material(see above picture). However, it never got to the consistency of normal cheese and if it sat for a while it would basically just turn into a puddle. I tried to put it in cold water like you see at the grocery store, but the cheese and water merged into one disgusting mess. The instructions said to make sure you don't use ultra-pasturized milk because the high heats used for that process will de-nature the proteins in milk and it won't curdle. The Wegmans milk I used clearly said "pasturized" while some of the Wegmans half and half said "ultra-pasturized", so that probably wasn't the cause, but I decided to used different milk the second time just in case.

For the second attempt I used Byrne Dairy milk. I've said before that Byrne Dairy milk and ice cream taste much stronger than regular dairy products. Not sure what they feed their cows, but their ice-cream is quite delicious, and I highly recommend it. Ironically, when I just looked up Byrne Dairy on wiki, it says they recently built an ultra-pasturization facility near Syracuse. Anyway, the second time I used Byrne Dairy milk and twice as much Rennet as the recipe suggested. This time it curdled significantly firmer, and close to the firmness that they showed in the instruction booklet. To separate the curds I just ladled them into a bowl. Then I heated and streched the curds as I had done before. It got firmer, and seemed to be at the point where it could be peeled a little bit like string cheese, so I was happy. I formed it into different size balls and even a few twist shapes. Later that night I served some of it at a Superbowl gathering and got one positive comment on the "delicious buffalo mozzarella". I stored most of it in tupperware in the fridge, but I didn't want to put it in water/brine because I feared the same thing would happen to this batch as happened to the first. The next day the shapes I had made were starting to merge together, but still tasted quite good. By a week later it had all merged into one smooth puddle molded to the shape of the tupperware. We used it for some home-made pizzas and it still tasted good, but I really wish it held its shape.

I'm guessing that I need to either heat the curds to higher temperatures while I stretch them, or just stretch them longer. If anybody has any experience with this, please let me know what I'm doing wrong.