My first cheddar came of age tonight and so we opened it up for a taste. It was good enough to eat, but I think if we're being honest with one another I have to admit that I've left myself some room for improvement. The taste was decent -- just a nice, mild cheddar. The mouth feel, however, wasn't quite right. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that it was kinda chalky. Though I haven't had one in ages, something tells me that I might be close to what it would be like to eat a cheese-flavored Necco wafer.
I suspect that I may have erred by overheating the curds. (That's not altogether surprising. We joke that you know I'm cooking when you hear the smoke detector beeping.) I'm going to do some poking around the Internet's many cheesemaking sites for tips and give it another go soon.
Today was mozzarella day. I have a farmhouse cheddar and colby aging in our refrigerator-turned-cheese-cave, and so I really wanted to experiment with a fresh cheese that would provide some instant gratification. And mozzarella is, conveniently, perhaps most delicious just after the moment of creation.
So, as for the result, first the bad: the texture was off. The edges of the ball were a tad too firm, giving it the appearance of having been heated too long. I kinda have no idea why that would be the case, since I followed the instructions closely and certainly didn't heat it any longer than indicated. But the good news is that the flavor was actually rather fantastic -- really rich and almost meaty.
Jane and I scarfed down the whole batch in one sitting. My belly hurts, but it was worth it.
I had gone into it a bit apprehensive this morning, but waxing my 2-pound cheddar wheel proved to be the easiest part of the cheese-making process. After melting the wax in a make-shift double boiler, it was no difficult task to paint on a few coats, using a boars-hair bristle brush that I picked up at the cooking store. Now it's into the fridge for at least a month to let the aging process ripen its flavor to the point of perfect deliciousness. By late spring, there will be cheese!
So I really decided to ratchet up my dork factor to record levels today by taking on cheese making as a new hobby. (A farmhouse cheddar, to start.) It turns out that cheese making isn't as difficult as I had thought it would be, as long as you start with high-quality milk and stay pretty true to the directions. Of course, I haven't been able to actually taste my final product yet, as my tiny wheel needs to age for at least a month first, so who knows how successful I was. But at every step of the way what I was doing roughly matched what I saw happening in the one million YouTube videos I watched on cheese making, so I can't imagine I was too far off.
A few pictures, starting with the adorable glass-bottled milk that I picked up at our local farmers market. Cheese making requires milk that hasn't been ultra-pasteurized, which many store-bought milks are these days. And I had been hoping to avoid the vitamin D added to a lot of them. (Has to do with the somewhat-less-than-vegetarian sources of the additive.) But I picked up these beauties for a few bucks each. The milk inside is what's called creamline, meaning that you have to shake before drinking to mix the cream back in:
I was surprised to find that cheddar's made by heating the milk in a water bath; you never involve a stove in the process at all. Here's a shot I took while patiently waiting for the thermometer to hit 90 degrees:
The curding stage, produced by the interaction of the mesophilic starter, heat, and rennet. It really put a huge smile on my face to produce these beauties. Up to that point, I had kinda been thinking, "yeah, this milk is gonna suddenly up and congeal because of 'science' -- suuure...":
The curds, broken up and salted. I snuck a taste. They were pretty good, actually -- like tiny milk clouds:
From there I packed it into a mold, and that's resting under 20 pounds of pressure as I type. A day or so of pressing is followed by four days of air drying, and then I get to wax it. Then it gets stored away for as little as a month and for as long I can possibly stand it. It gets better with age, of course, but I suspect that every day over thirty that I wait is going to feel like torture. I do love me some cheese.
For all you cheese-loving Brooklynites, the fried Saga blue cheese balls coated in crushed apple cinnamon Cheerios and served with chestnut/pear brandy puree at the new Union Hall are to die for.
