Cheese - Reasonable cheese 2

Continued from yesterday, we saw the curd set enough to get a relatively clean break.

The next step is to cut the curds into dice sized cubes. This doesn't need to be too fussy as far as size goes as the object is just to allow as much whey to escape the curd as possible. Some people use a whisk to gently cut their curds. I used a long knife. Either way, just try to not leave any large pieces.

I then raised the temperature gradually over 15 minutes until it was around 39 deg C, and held it there for an hour stirring gently every few minutes to prevent the curds from clumping.

Some of the cheeses I've read about included a step in their manufacture that involved replacing the whey with clean water for the final cooking. For no better reason other than it seemed like a good idea at the time, I did that. I drained the whey (pictured), then added hot water until the temperature read 43 deg C and held it at that temperature for about 15 minutes stirring gently.

After the 15 minutes the whey got smaller, tighter, and more dense. It sunk to the bottom as soon as it was let off the spoon.

It was time to deploy the "120 things in 20 years whey cool cheese press".

So I did.

I poured off the water, and tipped the curd into a cotton cloth lined strainer.

I then placed the wrapped curd into the press and clamped it down without going crazy on the pressure.

After 10 minutes I changed the cloth, flipped it over and clamped it down again for around 15 minutes.

Not a lot of whey came out this time. I covered it in yet another cotton cloth, flipped it over again, and clamped it down hard this time.

I left it overnight, and on opening it looks a lot like it did last night. But that's kind of ok, because last night it looked like a cheese.

It looks like a cheese but smells faintly of babies. Nice smelling, healthy, happy babies, but babies just the same.

I'm not sure that a cheese should smell like a baby.

Maybe babies smell like cheese.



My cheese smells like babies.

Cheese - Bouteille Cheese 2

It's probably worth mentioning at this stage, that if anyone out there reading this is trying it, you should stop. I have no Idea what I'm doing and at this is really just me expressing how impatient I get when my research-to-experimentation ratio doesn't fit my personality type. In other words sometimes I rush, in the company of fools. Basically if I stop blogging suddenly its because I'm spending a month in hospital getting a cheesectomy, due to the overwhelming colony of botchalism that's set up home in my gut.

That being said, I boiled water in the pot I'm using and sterilized a sieve, a large knife, and a plate to rest them on.

Next I put the bottle of milk that now smells slightly of fresh yogurt, with a hint of buttermilk, in a pot of 50 deg C water until it seemed as if it was also at 50 deg C.

The milk hadn't thickened as far as I could tell, but I think I could detect it starting to separate when I added the rennet. I read somewhere that your milk shouldn't have started to thicken when you add the rennet because you wont get a clean break. (a "clean break" is when you poke something into your curd, lift it, and the curd breaks rather than just sludging around, indicating your curd is of the correct firmness)

So the rennet is in the milk, and the milk is still in the bottle, and its all sitting at 50 deg C. At this stage the temptation to get it out of the bottle and into some kind of saucepan that would allow me to follow some instructions has me almost convinced. But, if I can do it all in a bottle, the issues of sterilization would all but disappear. Also it makes for a no mess, easy, child friendly way to make yet more cheese.

From time to time I'm adding some additional boiling water to the saucepan to maintain the temperature at around 50 deg C.

The rennet has been in for an hour, and unlike my haloumi, has failed to set very well. This could be because it had started to separate (see paragraph 4) before I added the rennet, because my temperatures were way too high(see paragraph 3), or simply because I have no idea. (see aquaponics, cheese, and solar hot water)

Its not looking so good, but I strained it out and have something that looks a bit like cottage cheese.

Pressing on regardless, we have this as the final result. It looks a bit like it could turn out to be a cheese, but be mindful of the fact that I've never seen a fresh cheese before. Only an enormous amount of time will tell.

By the time I've aged this for a bit to try and learn something about aging, I will have tasted it into oblivion.

Cheese - Haloumi and ricotta

I think I just made cheese!                                                                  [see the full haloumi story]

Haloumi is made with goat or sheep milk, but not in my house. All I have is cow's milk. It's also interesting in that you can fry it. I think you can even deep fry it.

After reading a stack of different recipes I've settled on a cross between an average of them all, and the limitations of my abilities and equipment.

First I made a double boiler to make the heating process gentle. I started by putting a cake cooling rack into a large fryingpan. Next I drowned a large saucepan about half filled with two litres of pasteurized, but not homogenized milk. I brought the milk to around 30 °C (the water in the frying pan was sitting at around 55 °C). Then I added around 7 drops of my vegetarian rennet.

After sitting at mostly 28-30 °C (fluctuating between 32 °C and 27 °C) for one hour, I was utterly surprised to find I had set the curd.

I cut the curd (lumpy stuff) into 1 cm cubes 

I then stirred it for around 25 minutes at around 40 °C.

I collected it into a sieve.

Then placed it onto a piece of cotton cloth in a colander

I added a weight to press it (5 litres of water in milk bottles), and left for a half hour or so to squish out much of the remaining whey.

Leaving that aside, squishing, I brought the whey up to the boil (around 88 °C) and added a teaspoon of salt and about 3 table spoons of vinegar.

This curdles the whey into ricotta!

I poured it through a sieve lined with a cotton cloth to collect the cheese.

Ricotta can be eaten right away and it tastes great, but I'm going to take it to a dinner party I've been invited to tonight and see what less biased people think. In fact I think I'll take some haloumi as well.

That being done and my ricotta put in a tub and refrigerated, the next step is to unwrap the haloumi ...

and cut it into smaller sections...

then add it back to the simmering whey to cook for a half hour or so.

I see my haloumi has floated to the top of the whey. I'm not sure what that means so I'm frantically researching.


CONCLUSION: I don't think it means anything.

the end result from my 2 litres of milk was...


90 g ricotta (tastes like ricotta!)

280 g haloumi (no idea yet)