{"id":31,"date":"2009-07-03T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/adventures-in-cheesemaking\/"},"modified":"2009-07-03T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-03T12:00:00","slug":"adventures-in-cheesemaking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/adventures-in-cheesemaking\/","title":{"rendered":"Adventures In Cheesemaking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon, I finally got around to getting the stuff together to make mozzarella.\u00c2\u00a0 I have been researching on the Internet, and had made a very basic cheese a few weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I was ready to tackle fresh mozzarella.\u00c2\u00a0 We buy it a couple times a week for food, so I figured why not try.\u00c2\u00a0 It looked pretty easy.<\/p>\n

After work yesterday, I drove over to the Modern Homebrew Emporium<\/a>, which is just up Mass. Ave. from Porters Square.\u00c2\u00a0 They sold me the basic mozzarella cheesemaking kit from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The kit cost about $25, and it had all the supplies to make 30 batches of cheese.\u00c2\u00a0 In hindsight, I should have just purchased the rennet and citrix acid, and spent less than half of what I did.\u00c2\u00a0 I have all the other supplies.\u00c2\u00a0 I drove home, and was so excited that I tore open the kit probably before I had set my keys down.\u00c2\u00a0 Gwen and I started making the cheese immediately.<\/p>\n

You can find the steps to do this in many places on the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 Additionally, the kit came with the basic instructions.\u00c2\u00a0 Here\u2019s a link to someone else\u2019s instructions that show basically what I did: http:\/\/www.instructables.com\/id\/Great-Mozzarella-Cheese\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Basically it involves:
\n– heat up a gallon of whole milk in a thick bottomed pot until it hits 90 degrees
\n– stir the whole time while heating
\n– take it off the heat
\n– add the Citric Acid, which has been dissolved in 1\/4 cup of non tap water (chlorine in tap water is bad for it)
\n– let sit for five minutes until a \u2018clean break\u2019 forms
\n– cut the clean break with a knife, then put it back on the heat
\n– heat to 105 degrees (Fahrenheit) while still stirring
\n– remove from heat again, let sit for 5 minutes
\n– strain out the whey
\n– heat in microwave for 1 minute
\n– add salt
\n– strain out the whey again
\n– heat in microwave for 30sec, or until it reaches 135 degrees
\n– stretch out the cheese until it\u2019s stringy and shiny
\n– chill in ice water<\/p>\n

That is more or less how easy it is.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, instructions can be found in many places, and there are many ways to do this.<\/p>\n

The one thing I messed up was storage.\u00c2\u00a0 We stored it in water and the water sorta killed the cheese in the fridge overnight.\u00c2\u00a0 I think we were supposed to use some sort of brine solution.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u2019ll work on this.\u00c2\u00a0 The first batch last night (before the storage step) came out GREAT!\u00c2\u00a0 Tasted exactly like the fresh mozzarella that you would buy in the store.\u00c2\u00a0 I was very proud of us.\u00c2\u00a0 The subequent ones that we stored overnight did not fare well due to the above mentioned mistakes.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u2019ll work on this.<\/p>\n

We have all the supplies (save for the milk \u2013 need more of that an would love to get my hands on some buffalo milk), so we will try again and keep working on the recipe and process until we find one that works perfect for us.\u00c2\u00a0 It felt good to succeed at something that I thought would be damn near impossible.<\/p>\n

The picture doesn\u2019t do it justice, and we will post some how-to pics later on, but THIS is what good fresh mozarella looks like.\u00c2\u00a0 Tasted great, too!<\/p>\n

\"P1020754\"<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday afternoon, I finally got around to getting the stuff together to make mozzarella.\u00c2\u00a0 I have been researching on the Internet, and had made a very basic cheese a few weeks ago.\u00c2\u00a0 Now I was ready to tackle fresh mozzarella.\u00c2\u00a0 We buy it a couple times a week for food, so I figured why not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[11,13],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-food","tag-homesteading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feedmittens.com\/fmblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}