Mushy Curd Set-up

[LilMissMuffet]

That is interesting. I'm in St. Louis. Raw milk is apparently still available for sale here, but limited. Could that affect the retail market? hmmmm?

 

[bernardsmith]

You might want to try this once to see if it will work for you: reconstituted milk powder. I have never used this but I suspect that it is made at lower temperatures and at lower pressure (in a vaccuum?). I cannot speak to how such cheese might taste when made but if the only milk you have available is UHT or equivalent then either shifting to powdered milk OR working with nuts to make vegan cheese might be practical solutions.

 

[LilMissMuffet]

Hi LMM and welcome. I make curd cheese almost every week. Never had a problem.
Here's my basic technique.
1. I bring my store bought whole milk to 90 F in a double boiler
2. I dissolve 1/4 t Ca Cl in 1/4 C distilled water and thoroughly mix in.
3. I add my culture (which is about 1/2 C of home made kefir - thoroughly mix in and let this stand for about 40 minutes to begin acidifying the milk
4. I dissolve 1/2 vegetarian rennet tablet in 1/4 C distilled water and mix in for about 30 seconds - 1 minute and let coagulate 40 minutes.
5 check for clean break
6. I cut curds (according to standard practice) and gently stir for 30 minutes as I raise temperature about 10 F OVER THE 30 MINUTES to about 100 F
7. I remove curds from whey and collect in cheese cloth lined colander and allow to drain 5 minutes
8. I hang cheese cloth and allow to drain for 15 minutes
9. I press for 60 minutes , turning every 15 minutes under weights that increase from about 4 lbs - 16 lbs
10. Under 16 lbs I cheddar the cheese for 30 minutes turning every 10 minutes. (to "cheddar", I cut the mass in half and use the weight of the cheese to help drain the curds, but I also use the 16 lbs during this time too (2 gallon milk containers filled with water).
11. I cut the cheese into cubes and salt and allow the salt to pressed under a plate for 5 minutes.
12 I place the curd cheese in container and store in fridge
The whole process including sanitizing and cleaning up afterwards takes about 4.5 - 5 hours.

Hi LMM and welcome. I make curd cheese almost every week. Never had a problem.
Here's my basic technique.
1. I bring my store bought whole milk to 90 F in a double boiler
2. I dissolve 1/4 t Ca Cl in 1/4 C distilled water and thoroughly mix in.
3. I add my culture (which is about 1/2 C of home made kefir - thoroughly mix in and let this stand for about 40 minutes to begin acidifying the milk
4. I dissolve 1/2 vegetarian rennet tablet in 1/4 C distilled water and mix in for about 30 seconds - 1 minute and let coagulate 40 minutes.
5 check for clean break
6. I cut curds (according to standard practice) and gently stir for 30 minutes as I raise temperature about 10 F OVER THE 30 MINUTES to about 100 F
7. I remove curds from whey and collect in cheese cloth lined colander and allow to drain 5 minutes
8. I hang cheese cloth and allow to drain for 15 minutes
9. I press for 60 minutes , turning every 15 minutes under weights that increase from about 4 lbs - 16 lbs
10. Under 16 lbs I cheddar the cheese for 30 minutes turning every 10 minutes. (to "cheddar", I cut the mass in half and use the weight of the cheese to help drain the curds, but I also use the 16 lbs during this time too (2 gallon milk containers filled with water).
11. I cut the cheese into cubes and salt and allow the salt to pressed under a plate for 5 minutes.
12 I place the curd cheese in container and store in fridge
The whole process including sanitizing and cleaning up afterwards takes about 4.5 - 5 hours.

 

[LilMissMuffet]

Hello again BernardSmith.
I've reread your curd cheese recipe multiple times, bought some Kefir grains to make enough milk for culture and am proceeding, assuming you started with a gallon of milk.
I will report back.
LMM
(actually a 65 year old male retiree, but liked the gravatar)
Kevin

 

[bernardsmith]

Kevin, Acquiring kefir grains is like buying a pet. You have to feed the grains regularly. You need only about 1/4 C of kefir (made from the grains) to culture 1 US gallon of milk... but you are going to obtain about 1 -2 cups of kefir every 24 - 48 hours. Of course, if you enjoy kefir , more power to ya. But if drinking/eating kefir is not your thing you can (and I do) make a hard (or even soft) kefir cheese from the kefir you collect.
Once I have about 1 gallon of kefir I drain the whey over about 12 hours and then increasingly add weights to the curds to press them so that I get a wheel of about 2 inches with a diameter of about 5 inches. After the initial pressing under about 4 lbs of weight (too much pressure too quickly will squeeze out more than the whey) I add salt and herbs or spices (about 1 T of each).

BUT, the thing about using kefir made from your own grains is that you never have to buy any lab produced cultures. Kefir possesses both mezzo and thermo cultures. It doesn't have P. Roqueforti but it does have the cultures with which you can make brie and Marcellin.

 

[LilMissMuffet]

You are an encyclopedia, Bernard Smith...and I appreciate you.
Regarding curd cheese; I am a Wisconsinite and have an idea of what I expect from a cheese curd. What I nearly ended up with was a mushy blob of something that could never had been "Cut into Cubes".
I reverted to the heat and stretch and heat mozerella procedure. I rescued it and instead of making a ball, stretched and twisted the "rope of cheese", folded it onto itself, and pressed overnight.
I made something like string-cheese and if I'd cut it into curd sizes pieces before pressing, might have a reasonable facsimile of cheese curds.
Nice and chewy, not "squeaky".
I , once again, underestimated the salt needed. It kind of scares me how much salt is needed.
I DID add some ground pepper and call it a success.

I will try your Kefir cheese later today.
LMM

 

[twd000]

I've been making milk kefir and also using it as a starter to make a fromage blanc soft cheese. I notice if I let the kefir sit too long the whey will separate. Seems I'm partway to fromage blanc already, without the extra steps of heating/adding CaCl2 / adding rennet/ keeping warm overnight. So what is the difference between old separated kefir cheese and fromage blanc?

 

[bernardsmith]

No expert but I suspect that the acidity level in kefir is much higher. The other day I made a batch of curd cheese using milk I had stored in the fridge for a week with the addition of kefir grains (I was not in a position to feed the grains as I normally do and was using the large volume of milk (1 gallon) and the cold temps of the fridge to slow down the fermentation. Well, the milk did coagulate but was far more grainy than normal. And I suspect that that was because of the lower pH.
Normally, when I raise the temperature to 90 F to begin ripening the milk with kefir, the milk does not visible curdle (clabber) but this time it did. So... I would argue that you can certainly make soft cheese using the same techniques as you normally do using the kefir made from the grains BUT that cheese will not be the SAME cheese. Certainly, when I make cheese FROM kefir itself, I cannot use the same amount of rennet to help coagulate the milk. I have not tried using 4 times the amount of rennet but even doubling the amount has no effect because the milk is so acidic. Others with more experience or biochemical knowledge may understand things quite differently...

 

[twd000]

thanks for the comment. I recall reading somewhere that the optimal pH for adding rennet was around 6.0. I inoculated a batch of milk at 90F with 1/4 cup of kefir and monitored pH over the next hour or so. It only dropped a few 0.1's and was getting late and I needed to get some sleep so I added the rennet anyhow. The curds still set up pretty firm but I wonder if I should plan to wait longer next time for the kefir to acidify the milk down to 6.0 prior to adding the rennet?

 

[bernardsmith]

But when one adds cultures to milk one waits - what? Forty minutes? An hour? If you are adding the recommended amount of culture whether dry or active (as with kefir etc) then in the normal recommended time your milk will have ripened to the desired level. But most parts of the process do not require many hours (pressing is the exception, as is air drying and aging)
That said, I generally treat cheese making much like I view cake baking: I use recipes because I assume that amounts and ingredients and temperatures are not easily substitutable. With bread making I don't use recipes because I am looking for outcomes and I know how to achieve the outcomes I want. Cake ain't forgiving. And although I do believe that cheese is as forgiving as bread (my own experience has been (limited though it is) that 100 F can be 115F without significant impact and constant stirring can be every five minutes (with ditto impact) and 8 lbs can be 16 lbs) ... In other words, when cheeses were made throughout history most folk who made them did not have the tools to accurately measure time, weight, or temperature...

 

[twd000]

yes, agreed that "close enough is good enough" and here I am using a digital thermometer and pH meter

I'm just wondering if I'm not pitching enough active kefir if the acidification is slow. I have no idea how many colony-forming-units are in 1/4 cup of my kefir, compared to a packet of flora danica...

 

[bernardsmith]

If you are worried I would add a half cup but not increase the time over "ripening". I certainly have no problem when I use kefir that has been on my counter 24 - 48 hours as the source of the culture... and remember, with folk cheese making they would use raw milk that would have been milked earlier that day or allowed to sit overnight. Raw milk - so the amount of bacteria would not be enormous AND when you heat the milk to say, 90F you are encouraging the the bacteria to reproduce. After you add the rennet at that same temperature the bacteria are going to continue to reproduce and reproduction is never linear. The growth is exponential.