Through Thick and Thin

As I observed the children's cheesemaking class a few weeks ago, I watched 11-year-olds beat me at my own game. The mozzarella they made in class was a gooey, elastic beauty of dairy Gak. (I miss Gak.). My curd never quite looked like that. It always falls apart into smaller grains. Though, eventually it does come together in the stretching phase. For instance, the last batch of accidentally successful mozzarella I made started out a little grainy, but stretched out to a smooth ball that was fully functional for cooking and melting.

I was jealous of their novice success, yet, undaunted and determined to create an equally attractive mozzarella curd at home. My hypotheses for the cause of my shortcomings were 1) an overly dry curd, caused either by stirring too much, cooking at high temperatures, or a small cut; or 2) a bad set/coagulation, caused either by too little rennet, a short set time, or the poor quality of my store-bought milk. Milk quality was likely the biggest factor. The children's class was using raw milk straight from the cow. But there's nothing I can really do about that, short of getting a goat to feed off the tumbleweed in the desert bordering Mexico out back.

I attempted to mimick the curd of my pre-pubescent nemeses first with a citric acid batch, and then, with a cultured batch. I changed just a few of the factors first to see if I could pinpoint the problem. I used a little more rennet, barely stirred the curd, and cut the curd into large squares to retain moisture. It immediately fell apart. The curd was so weak and grainy that I couldn't even drain it. The curds never molded together and, instead, slipped right through my strainer, mocking me as they poured down my disposal.

So, on my next attempt, I increased the set time as well as the rennet, and I reduced the temperature to about 100 degrees during stirring. I also went back to my original 1-inch checkerboard cut. Same problem. It wasn't the size of the cut, the temperature, or any of my guesses relating to the coagulant, unless it was a combination of all three, in which case I would be making a new batch to control for each factor and sub-factor individually. I did not have the patience or milk funds to be quite that mad of a scientist.

I also surmised that the omission of calcium chloride, which I usually add to strengthen curd from store-bought milk, may have been a culprit. But the mozzarella help page on New England Cheesemaking Supply Co.'s website indicated that the omission shouldn't be a problem even with store-bought milk. In fact, depending on initial calcium phosphate and ionic calcium levels in the milk, calcium chloride may be counterproductive when making mozzarella because during the stretch you are trying to elongate the protein matrix which is held together, in part, by the bound calcium.

Bewildered, angry, and dejected, I drained my second weak batch in cheese cloth instead of a strainer so that I could actually capture some of the useless curd. For what purpose, I don't know. Punch it into submission? Face it down before it ran away in the drain and threaten that soon, very soon, its comrades would be mine to eat? Scare my mess o' curd into working for me, I suppose.

Ricotta ball

Both times my curd looked more like ricotta than mozzarella. Why not just make some ricotta with the whey, I thought, and salvage some of the cost of this failure. Ricotta, translated from Italian to "recooked," is formed when protein and minerals leftover in the whey are precipitated out with heat and acid levels.

I boiled the whey from my cultured batch until flakes of ricotta started to rise, drained it, and formed a small ball (ricotta from whey is a low-yield cheese). You can only make this style of ricotta from whey left after a culture ripened batch, not an acid precipitated batch. In other words, I can't use the whey from my citric acid batch to make ricotta. All of the specific protein that rises out to form ricotta has already been precipitated into the curd when you use acids such as vinegar or citric acid as the ripening or curdling agent.

The ricotta success was met with mild satisfaction as I casually tossed the ball into my fridge. (Stay tuned next time for the delicious journey that ball of ricotta takes.). I had wasted two gallons of milk, and was forced to re-up once again for my final attempt at a really good mozzarella curd. I had regressed from moderate success to colossal disappointment in under two weeks.

Third time's a charm, they say. But "they" say a lot of stupid crap, so I wasn't convinced. Regardless, I started again on a citric acid batch. No calcium chloride, diluted citric acid, a slightly increased amount of rennet, a longer set time, usual cut (1-inch checkerboard). Curd with store bought milk would always be weak, so again I stirred very slowly. I also heated the curd a little more, inching past the usual 110 degrees to about 115. Higher temperatures form a drier curd, which I was hoping would also be firmer and more likely to hold together in the whey. And, while the moisture would take a hit, I was hoping the the slow stirring would compensate. My last correction: using bottled water to dissolve the rennet instead of tap water.

Chlorine, which can be found in trace amounts in most tap water, will kill your rennet. When I started making cheese in the kitchen, I always used bottled water. Then I got lazy and cheap and started using tap water without any repercussion. My curd always set. It wasn't hard to believe that Del Rio's public utilities employees might be cutting some corners in their water treatment and failing to add a chemical or two. So maybe there's no chlorine, I thought? In reality, my guess is that a combination of factors in previous cheeses, maybe varying levels of chlorine or the effects of calcium chloride, masked my tap water problem.

THAT is a good stretch. That
 is also what unrestrained
glee looks like. 

A combination of poor quality milk, the omission of calcium chloride, and tap water interacting with the rennet likely had confounded my two recent mozzarella attempts. Then again, all of this is wild conjecture. The one change to my dilution, however, seemed to do the trick. After draining, I had the best mozzarella curd of my short cheese life. It was still grainer than the class curd, but I think milk quality will always affect that texture somewhat. After it was completely drained, it gelled together into a moist, gooey blob that stretched and stretched until the joy numbed me to the fact that I was burning my hands on hot mozzarella.

Home cheesemaking of late has been a series of peaks and valleys, peaking soon after I simply own the valleys of really, really, sucking at this game. I couldn't make a cheese with a proper meltable texture, so I owned my foibles and made a successful Paneer, a cheese that is meant to be unmeltable. Then, bam, my next attempt at cultured mozzarella sans pH meter worked, almost by accident. Then, I had batch after batch of mozzarella curd that was more aptly identified as bad ricotta. So, I make a proper batch of whey ricotta for the first time. Shazam! No more cheese funk and, on the next attempt, I make mozzarella curd with the best stretch yet. I'm not really sure what to call this pattern of existence. But I'm pretty sure that such a pattern -- one of simply repeating the product of failure in order to become better at the original goal -- would rarely work in other facets of life...at least not without (hilariously) tragic results. And that is one of many reasons why, despite our struggles, cheese and I remain BFFs.