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.
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