Yogurt and Cheese

So just a quick update while I wait for my mozzarella cheese to curd up. Last week was a little crazy with friends going up to Peterborough in order to visit a church that another friend may be working at soon (fingers crossed), but the good news was that I was able to pick up some Kawartha dairy milk which is on the "good milk" list from cheesemaking.com

The hope was that the milk was the problem with the first batch of cheese so the Kawartha milk should work... sadly this was not the case. I followed the instructions exactly and it came out the same way... a smooth cream cheese consistency. So this really bummed me out and I was about to quick making cheese when Talia suggested I email the people at cheesemaking.com and ask them what could be wrong. So I did and a couple days later they replied saying that the 135F may be to hot for the milk that we have here. So today I am trying again, this time with the cheap Beatric milk but only bringing the temperature up until it starts to stretch. Hopefully this will work...

The other thing that I wanted to try was to add more rennet. This time instead of adding 1/4 tablets I added 1/2. Unfortunately I think that may have been a mistake as now that the curding has started it isnt looking quite right.

I think the problem is that the extra rennet started the curding faster that I was expecting so I was mixing it for too long and that made some whey come to the top. I do appear to be getting a good separation between the curds and whey so I'm hoping that it's just the mixing. With luck it will still work out.

In other news I have a new Yogurt maker. This one is electric so that the temperature is guaranteed to be near the 110F that the bacteria needs in order to work. I tried it last week and was a little worried because the container says that it should  make yogurt in about 4-4.5 hours and when I checked it was still really liquidly. My main concern was that the apartment was too warn which was making the maker kill the bacteria instead of nurture it. Again Talia rescued me by suggest I leave it for the usual 10-12 hours and just like that it was great. Even better than the old maker because this was really nice and thick. I am making my 2nd batch as we speak. This time instead of using the yogurt form last week as the starter I decided to try the dried package of starter that came with the maker. I'm wondering if it wont make yogurt faster because its a slightly different strain. We will see in about 3 hours from now.


Edit: SUCCESS!!!! I have officially made mozzarella cheese. Haven't tried it yet; it's still in the freezer chilling (I didnt have ice cubes for ice water so I figured that I would just put it in the freezer for 15 minutes instead).

When I first started to heat it I was worried cause it wasn't holding together but it turns out it just wasnt hot enough to start holding together. I stretched it very nicely and it turned into a nice ball of mozzarella. I havent weight it yet but I would get somewhere between 400-500g.

~(' ')~

sometimes I find money

So over the years several people have connected to me that I seem to find coins and money on the ground a lot. Probably because I have a tendency to look downward when I walk. I never really thought about it and figured that everyone found money occasionally. But this random comment made me wonder how much I could find in a year. So over the last year every time I have found money on the ground I have picked it up and taken it home and hidden it away. Now, I don't know the exact date that I started but I do remember it was some time in the winter after my birthday so given that it has been approximately a year I decided to open up my little treasure trove and find out how much I had collected.

denomination	Count
$0.01	39
$0.05	2
$0.10	18
$0.25	2
$1.00	0
$2.00	0
$5.00	1
$100.00	1
$20.00	1
Total	$37.84

I also found a subway token and 5cents of canadian tire money.

I'm a little shocked

~($ $)~

Mozzarella Take 1

So this evening I tried to make a mozzarella cheese. This is a project that started with my girlfriend getting me a cheese making kit for my birthday. Unfortunately all the cheeses in the hard cheese kit require cheese wax to age them. So a week or so ago I went online and ordered the cheese wax.... And while I was at it I also ordered the mozzarella kit, cause really who wants to spend $16 to ship a $6 item. I would much rather spend $17 to send the wax and the kit :)

My wax arrived on Thursday but I wasn't able to pick it up until today (Saturday). So after an adventurous day of going to the market and then to the fabric store I was finally able to try making some cheese. I grabbed a bag of 3.25% Beatric milk to try and started the process.

The process isn't that hard and can be done in 30 minutes or so but it does require a lot of steps of heating and then letting sit and then heating.

The final step is the most interesting one where you drain the curds form the whey and heat the mozzarella and then stretch. Unfortunately this is where things started to fall apart. Instead of forming into a ball and stretching the cheese melted and turned into a paste. It tasted like mozzarella but did not have the consistency at all. This really bummed me out but after some research on the internet I think the reason is 2 things.

1) Too much heat. I was using the microwave to heat the curds and I think they heated too much
2) Not enough draining. After watching several videos I realized that I wasn't aggressive enough when it came to draining the whey from the curds.

Also in my searches I came across some milk that is supposed to be better for cheese making.

Hope is not lost yet. Tomorrow I am going to visit my Grandma in the morning but after I am going to grab another bag of better milk and try again. wish me luck


Picture time:

The odd thing is that after it turned to paste I put it in the fridge and the flavour really changed. Now instead of tasting like mozzarella it tastes like cream cheese. Talia Loves It

!(' ')!