I'm in Ur Kitchin, Makin Ur Curdz: Super Bowl Edition

Pizza and football!!

Mozzarella holds a lofty position shared by very few of its colleagues in the cheese pantheon. It is a cheese even cheese-haters will admit to liking. It exists in a realm similar to the cheese ambassador role to which I previously appointed cheddar. Unlike cheddar, which can excel to great heights of flavor intensity, mozzarella is safer, tiptoeing over your taste buds with its soothing creaminess. When I was working the farmers markets, one out of five people would compare a sample to cheddar or ask if I had any cheddar. ("Do you have any cheddar?" was the second most annoying question about the product, runner-up to "Is that soap?".) The second most requested cheese was mozzarella to accompany the fresh herbs and vegetables people had purchased at the market. Bottom line: both are examples of cheese that are well-liked and equally ubiquitous. Cheddar can make a good hamburger great. But Mozzarella is often needed, not just desired. What's a caprese salad without mozzarella? Who wants of a slice of pizza without cheese (unless you're on a diet and you hate freedom)?  Sure, mozzarella is a relatively bland cheese, but it serves a host of delicious purposes. More importantly for me, it's really fun to make.

On my second full day at Brazos Valley Cheese, I caught wind that there were many pounds of mozzarella waiting to be stretched. I kept eyeing the buckets of milled cheese, salted and ready to be formed into smooth mozzarella. I had never played with mozzarella before,--yes, it's actually playing, like a child set loose on a giant ball of Gak--so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss out on the action. Finally, an hour before I leave the fun started. The cheese curd was made the previous day. The next day it is milled and salted. As with cheddar, milling the mozzarella is slicing larger blocks of cheese into smaller pieces, and mixing those smaller pieces with salt. At this point, you could just eat the salted cheese curds plain. To make mozzarella those curds need to be melted into one giant mass and stretched. Hot water, near 185 degrees Fahrenheit, poured into trays of curd enables the melting and stretching. With rubber gloves to protect our hands from the scalding heat, we start mashing and kneading the curd pieces together in the trays. The flowing steam and physical exertion brought back memories from the summer at Cato Corner. Back then, my my only frame of reference was the serious cheese work-out of stirring a 120-degree vat of nearly 4000lbs of curds and whey. Cheesemaking has gotten progressively less sweaty.

As we knead, we watch the pliability of the curd. The water may loose too much heat before the mozzarella is ready to stretch. For this batch we drained the trays and filled them with a new batch of hot water twice. On the second attempt, the curds began to really knit together and form an elastic mass. The cheese is folded over again and again until the curds have sufficiently melted together and are no longer individual lumps. At this point, the cheese has enough elasticity to stretch repeatedly like taffy until it becomes smooth and shiny. The entire blob can molded into one giant block; broken off into smaller pieces to stretch and twist into braids; ripped apart and rolled into balls; or molded for any purpose or shape you desire. If you are making something like a ball or braid, then once you from the shape, it is immediately dumped in cold water to ensure it holds the shape.

My hooped and drained grainy mess.
This is NOT what the
curd should look like. 

My first foray into mozzarella was a good lesson on what how the cheese should behave and look. So I was ready to try it on my own in the kitchen. On Super Bowl Sunday, Tad and I had grand plans to make homemade pizza with our own homemade dough, sauce, and mozzarella. The cheese was my assignment, but my kitchen variety would be slightly different from the style I had made at work.

I was making the quicker homemade version with citric acid to acidify the milk instead of cultures. The entire process should be under an hour versus the two-day process I described above. Acidification is the key to the elasticity in the stretch phase, and thus the smooth texture. The two-day version uses only cultures without any citric acid; the curd acidifies for a few hours until the end of the work day and is refrigerated overnight so it can be milled, salted, and stretched the next day. I have also seen a citric acid and culture combination that would give you the benefit of a quicker version, but with the flavor from the cultures.

Looking better and ready to stretch

I started with my store-bought whole milk, heated it, and added the citric acid and rennet. I also added lipase, an enzyme that provides a stronger flavor, especially in Italian cheese, but is destroyed during pasteurization. I hoped this would help add some complexity that would be missing due to the quality of the milk and the absence of a true starter culture. Unfortunately, several things seemed like they were going wrong. One, I didn't read the instructions on my lipase powder and failed to add it correctly or at the correct moment. I have no idea what that actually did. At the very least, it was ineffective because the mozzarella just tasted like cooked milk. Second, likely because of the quality of the milk, the curd did not form as well as it should have. It was too grainy and fragile. Adding calcium chloride may have helped form a firmer curd with the milk I was using. Next time.

Stretching under its weight.
A better curd would have
made a more elastic stretch.

This time, however, I was afraid the cheese was too grainy to knit together and stretch. Despite my insistence that we pick up some "back-up" mozzarella at the store in the event of a mozzarella-fail on my part, Tad refused to do so--I assume to prove a point about confidence. There would be no cheese-less, freedom-hating pizza under my roof! So I plodded ahead.

Oh hey! That actually looks like
mozzarella!

I assumed the best way to stretch the curd and get the right texture would be to heat water or whey to 180 degrees on the stove and immerse the drained curd in a bowl. An alternate method was provided in the recipe that allowed for a quicker stretch by using the microwave. I needed to see if I could salvage my curd as quickly as possible. I opted for the microwave method. I threw my hooped and drained curd into a bowl, microwaved for 30 seconds, and it was almost immediately ready to stretch. The grainy consistency was, thankfully, melting together nicely into a smooth, elastic mass that seemed readily identifiable as mozzarella. I repeated the microwave step one more time and was able to form a ball. I set the balls in a cold salt brine, which I had opted for instead of salting the curd directly. I assumed the pizza would have enough salt and I wanted the milder flavor I hoped the brine would achieve. It may have been a little too mild, highlighting the boring milkiness of the flavor. Next time I would try to remedy the taste by salting the curd and experimenting with starter culture.

It appeared that a crisis was averted. Still, I wasn't completely satisfied. The flavor was uninspired. Also, despite not being grainy in appearance, there was a little bit of grain left in the bite. Graininess became less relevant when the cheese was melted on the pizza. At least this cheese melted unlike the NASA rubber experiment that resulted form my first home cheesemaking attempt. I called it a partial success and a good lesson in what to change next time.