I went ahead with the cheese experiment.
I made 1 cup of citric acid solution with 1 tbs of citric acid. Then heated 1 gallon of skim milk to 140f. Then added the acid solution. Got a nice coagulation going. The whey turned yellowish. Then I brought it up to 170f. I think that was a mistake. Around 160-165f the whey clouded up again, so I'm thinking I lost a lot of proteins to the whey again. I poured the whey through a colander to extract the curd, then discarded the whey. The final cheese tastes good, but it failed to achieve the kind of stretchy layers you get from mozzarella. It is semi-sticky. The yield was also somewhat low. I yielded .72 lbs from 1 gallon of skim milk. With a fairly high protein extraction, I was expecting between .85 and .90.
Clearly this process needs some more refinement, but it does work. To me, it's much easier then the other methods for making mozzarella I've seen. I should trust my instincts more I suppose. I knew when the vast majority of the proteins had coagulated and it should have been pulled from the heat. I just thought I would listen to my head and run up the temp to mozzarella stretching temps... Turns out I mis-remembered the temps, you only need to hit 135 to get mozzarella to stretch.
Next time I'll bring the milk up to 140f add the acid solution, and hold the temp there while the proteins coagulate. I don't think I actually needed to raise the temp like I did with this batch, and the last one. I think I just needed to wait a few minutes and stir gently to get the proteins to stick together.
I made 1 cup of citric acid solution with 1 tbs of citric acid. Then heated 1 gallon of skim milk to 140f. Then added the acid solution. Got a nice coagulation going. The whey turned yellowish. Then I brought it up to 170f. I think that was a mistake. Around 160-165f the whey clouded up again, so I'm thinking I lost a lot of proteins to the whey again. I poured the whey through a colander to extract the curd, then discarded the whey. The final cheese tastes good, but it failed to achieve the kind of stretchy layers you get from mozzarella. It is semi-sticky. The yield was also somewhat low. I yielded .72 lbs from 1 gallon of skim milk. With a fairly high protein extraction, I was expecting between .85 and .90.
Clearly this process needs some more refinement, but it does work. To me, it's much easier then the other methods for making mozzarella I've seen. I should trust my instincts more I suppose. I knew when the vast majority of the proteins had coagulated and it should have been pulled from the heat. I just thought I would listen to my head and run up the temp to mozzarella stretching temps... Turns out I mis-remembered the temps, you only need to hit 135 to get mozzarella to stretch.
Next time I'll bring the milk up to 140f add the acid solution, and hold the temp there while the proteins coagulate. I don't think I actually needed to raise the temp like I did with this batch, and the last one. I think I just needed to wait a few minutes and stir gently to get the proteins to stick together.