Making Mozzarella
Since we have a surplus of milk, I took a shot at cheesemaking, using a recipe found here. After adding citric acid to the cold milk, warming to 90 degrees and stirring in the rennet, below is what it looks like. |
| Testing the curds - the whey should be clear and the curds stiff enough to peel back like this. I left it to sit beyond the recommended 5 minutes to get to this point. |
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| Cutting the cheese (nyuck nyuck!) |
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| After heating the curds up to 110 degrees, removing from heat, and stirring for about 5 minutes, you drain the creamy whey off -- it went into pancakes this morning. |
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| After pressing the curds in the colander and nuking it, you knead it and stretch it... at this point, I lost track of the directions (partly because they were on my phone and my hands were messy). Here's where you'd knead in some salt for flavor (which I forgot). |
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| Soak in cold water, wrap, and you have cheese! |
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| Back to the big pot of yellow whey (which after some later reading I found is handy to keep hot for bathing the cheese in as you stretch it), heat the whey to 200 degrees and let it cool. |
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| The proteins that are left over bind together and float -- ladle them out and drain with a cloth, and you get ricotta cheese. |
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| We ate this in our pancakes this morning also! |
