As I've chronicled, only three of my homemade cheese attempts have worked. The first success was the fromage blanc, which was the cream cheese style spreadable concoction that required next to no effort aside from waiting for it to drain. Then, there was the citric acid-based mozzarella recipe. While it counts as a successful cheese that worked on our pizza, using citric acid is the easy, uninspired way of making mozzarella. No cultures are involved, so there is little to no finessing the science of the make; the curd is ready to stretch immediately; and the end product is rather boring and mildly grainy. Most recently, there was the divine cheese revelation that led me to the glory of Indian Paneer. But Paneer is a niche cheese without much versatility. Still, that makes three (the yogurt has also been a success, but that's not a cheese). Every other attempt has been a monumental failure in curd, defying the physics of good food and traditional notions of edible dairy products.
I had yet to conquer my quest for the perfect... no no... my quest for an acceptable cheese curd.
The fortuitous lesson that was imparted on me by mystical cheese spirits in my last post was to first conquer what I knew best. Namely, Paneer, a cheese from my ancestral motherland that refuses to melt with the best of 'em. My cosmic luck carried over from the Paneer make, resulting in a glorious mozzarella curd that I cooked up almost purely by accident.
I followed a basic recipe for mozzarella that was similar to the Asadero recipe gone wrong. On my previous attempt with a pasta filata cheese, the curd acidified for too long and became too sour and impossibly grainy to stretch. Before that, I was too impatient and the curd was too rubbery to stretch. This time I was as careful as possible and cataloged all my steps. Heat milk, add culture, dissolve lipase in water while milk ripens for 40 minutes, add lipase, add rennet, set for 30 minutes. Then, I cut the curd so that it would be slightly bigger than usual. The larger the cut, the more whey that is retained, making a moister curd and cheese. A moister curd will also cause your pH to drop faster after the make. I don't have all day to wait until that pH gets to 5.2, I thought.
I stirred the curd for just a few minutes at 110 degrees to release a bit of whey. Longer stirring releases more whey and dries out the curd. I let the curd sit in the pot at that temperature for about an hour. Then, I hooped and drained. I let the cheese press in the colander under my standard miscellaneous heavy jug pressing rig. My lesson from last time was that I had left the curd out to acidify for too long. I had every intention of pressing and letting the curd acidify for just a few hours, before putting the pressed cheese in the refrigerator to be stretched in hot water the next day for our March Madness-edition pizza.
Basketball, bourbon, and an early bedtime, conspired to erase my memory of all cheese related tasks. I went to sleep without putting the pressed cheese in the fridge. Realizing what I had done, I woke up the next morning with cheese rage. Another batch ruined!! To this point, failure had led me to to re-up my milk supply so many times in such unseemly quantities that grocery cashiers and patrons were starting to give me the squint eye. Each time more dejected than before, I was buying milk like a crazed, strung-out, belligerent dairy fiend. I was immediately embarrassed at the thought of going back to the store for more to try this debacle again.
With my head hung in shame, I plopped the pressed curd mass into a bowl, broke it apart, and boiled some water in the kettle to begin the sure-to-be failed stretch. I taste tested the curd. It had flavor but was not nearly as powerful as the previous over-acidified batch. Still, this couldn't possibly end well.
I poured the hot water over the cheese, and, to my surprise, it started to meld and stretch together as I kneaded it with a spoon. Whaaaa?! How could this be? It was working. I had a smooth, delicious mozzarella ball, and I sure as hell couldn't tell you how.I have no explanation or tip to impart as to what step I did or didn't do that made this curd almost perfect, especially when the previous batch had become so horribly over-acidified in the same amount of time.
I did learn one lesson that would apply to my next attempt. Because I'm using pasteurized store-bought milk that's taken a beating in transport, I've added calcium chloride to every batch to help the curd coagulate. Next time I make a cheese that requires stretching, I will omit that step. A bit of reading indicates that calcium chloride may not be needed for a pasta filata cheese. The pH necessary for stretching is the appropriate moment when the calcium to protein ratio is such that the protein matrix in the cheese becomes pliable enough to stretch and melt. Adding more calcium to the mix may disrupt the whole process.
Of course, a pH meter would have still helped. Even though this batch was successful, I'm still driving blind and getting lucky, or unlucky as the case may be. I would have had no idea when that curd was ready. That's not true. The less scientific, more cumbersome, approach would be to start testing small pieces of curd in hot water periodically to see if the cheese is ready to stretch. Sure, on my off days from work I have all day to attempt that method. But for now, I've got basketball to watch.
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