— 402W

After our initial, relatively successful foray into winemaking, Emily and I decided to try our hand at creating some cheese.  We purchased a Mozzarella and Ricotta cheesemaking kit from Brooklyn Homebrew that included everything you need to make cheese at home.

The first (and most obvious) ingredient is milk.  It is important that the milk is as fresh as it can be, and also NOT ultrapasteurized.  The ultrapasteurization process takes place at high enough temperatures to damage the proteins needed to make cheese.  For this go-around, we just used the fairly cheap whole milk from the deli downstairs.

To start the process of turning this milk into cheese, we took 1-1/2 tsp of citric acid, diluted it in 1 cup of water, and added it to the cold 1 gallon of milk.  Citric acid functions as an emulsifying salt to stabilize the water and oil phases of the cheese and improve body and texture.  After the acid was thoroughly mixed in, we put the mixture on the stove and heated it to 90 deg F.

While the milk/water/acid mixture was heating, we prepared the rennet solution.  Aside from milk, rennet is the most important part of the recipe.  According to Wikipedia, rennet “is a complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach to digest the mother’s milk, and is often used in the production of cheese.”  It acts on milk’s proteins, like casein, to bind them into curds.  The rennet contained in this kit was most likely extracted from the stomach of a calf as a side product of veal production.  The recipe called for 1/4 tablet (1/4 tsp) of rennet diluted in 1/4 tsp of cool water, per gallon of milk.  When the milk solution reached 90 deg F, we removed from heat, stirred in the rennet solution, and covered for 5 minutes to allow the mixture to harden.

After uncovering, we were able to see a clear separation of curd and whey when pushing on the side of the solution.  The first couple of times we checked it wasn’t quite hard enough, so we let it sit about 5 additional minutes.

To further separate the curds from the whey, we cut the cheese (hehe) at an angle into approx. 1″ cubes…

…stirred them over heat until they reached 105 deg F, then removed from the heat and stirred for 5 more minutes.

We then strained any excess whey to leave only some delicious mozzarella curds behind.

After transferring to a microwave-safe bowl, we microwaved the curds on high for 1 minute…

…and drained any remaining whey from the mix.

At this point, we reheated the curd in the microwave to 135 deg F, and were supposed to knead the cheese like bread dough.  However, there were two problems.  First, I accidentally overheated the cheese so it was a bit too hot to knead by hand at first.  Secondly, the cheese appeared to be a bit soft, almost like ricotta in texture, and wouldn’t clump together like mozzarella should, resulting in a severe case of cheesehands.  Normally, at this point we would have stretched the cheese to align the proteins and help it solidify, but the consistency was just too soft to do this.

Despite the all-too-apparent issues, we stuck with it and continued to reheat and knead (with a spoon when it was too hot) for a few iterations, and eventually came up with something resembling a mozzarella ball.

It was at this point that Emily came up with an ingenious plan – she suggested that we wrap the soft cheese in plastic wrap and place it in the fridge overnight, in hopes that the cheese would harden into the shape of the plastic.

Lo and behold, when we took it out in the morning, it had actually hardened!  After a taste-test, we realized we had come up with a delicious mozzarella-ricotta hybrid, with a taste like ricotta and the consistency of mozzarella.  Strange, and not what we expected, but definitely pretty tasty!

In the end, our new “mozzacotta” was deeeelicious on an omelette!

Once again, we ended up a great final product, but also learned some things along the way:

Lesson 1: Happy Cows don’t necessarily mean Quality Milk
According to Home Cheese Making, a book that we had purchased with the kit, the soft texture that we ended up with may not have been our fault.  Although the cheap milk that we bought wasn’t ultrapasteurized, it was still probably over-heated during the normal pasteurization process, destroying the proteins needed to make a harder cheese.  We did what we could, but next time it would be better to use higher quality milk to start with.

Lesson 2:  Got me feelin’ so Fly like a Cheesehead
To be honest, Lesson 1 may have been the only lesson we needed to learn.  Although this cheese ended up being a little soft and tasted a little differently than we expected, it was a great addition to our breakfast and several other meals…and was a lot of fun to make!