The other day I ordered the ingredients to make mozzarella from Leener’s. It arrived at work earlier this week, and seriously, I felt like if they checked my bag in the subways, I could have been mistaken for a terrorist. I had clear bottles of liquid labeled as calcium chloride and powders labeled citric acid and lipase. Can you imagine me reasoning with the officer, “Really, it’s for cheese making!” (This is after one of the coffee guys near my work at Wall St. was arrested for going to Pakistan to learn how to make bombs… supposedly.
I was really excited and couldn’t wait to make it… however, given the nature of the task at hand, I didn’t want to multitask making cheese and preparing dinner. This is why I waited until the weekend when the cheese can have my undivided attention.
The instructions on the leener’s site was pretty darn good. For additional reference, I used A Good Appetite’s entry, also. I have a few side notes to add… mostly so people don’t make the same mistake I did.
Overall the cheese making was a success. I was actually a little nervous, because I was cutting the recipe down to 1/4, since I was making it with a fourth of a gallon. I didn’t want to start off with such a large batch. Also, I don’t have gigantic pots. However, cutting the rennet tablet into 1/8th proved to be simple. However measuring 1/16th of something when I only have measuring spoons up until 1/8th proved to be a little bit of guess work.
I measured out everything ahead of time and dissolved the lipase, rennet, and calcium chloride into around two teaspoons of distilled (or boiled) water.
- 4 cups of 2% organic pasturized store bought milk
- 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid
- 1/16 teaspoon of lipase dissolved in 2 teaspoons of boiled water
- 1/8 teaspoon of calcium chloride dissolved in 2 teaspoons of boiled water
- 1/8 rennet tablet dissolved in 1 tablespoon of boiled water
- 1/8 teaspoon of flaked salt
I stirred in the calcium chloride, lipase, and citric acid, while heating. What I found troubling, was that the milk heated up in no time. This might be because I was using only 1/4 of the milk described. It took less than 5 minutes to heat under medium. If you are making cheese in small batches, I would use low flame, while stirring constantly. Also, before putting the rennet in at 88 degrees, I would turn the heat off, stir it in, then start the flame up again on low heat.
Once I put the rennet in, it heated up to 105 in a matter of seconds. Seriously. (I had a digital meat thermometer, I kept an eye on the cooking temperature.) I would try to slow this down a little bit, next time. The cheese by then curdled like the above photo, and I left the mixture covered for 20 minutes.
After 20 minutes, I drained the mixture (while squeezing with a slotted spoon), and for good measure, I strained the whey. I dumped the curds in a microwavable silicon bowl and heated on high for 60 seconds as directed. The cheese was super soft and tender. I squeezed the whey out and at this point I could have kneaded the salt in. However, stupid me microwaved it again for 10 seconds and started kneading. This made the cheese super tough after a while. “When am I suppose to pull this sucker?” I thought. So I went back to the blog and I realized that initially it was all ready sticking to the spoon when I first microwaved it. Please, don’t over microwave it.
However, I salvaged it by adding some whey and re-microwaving for 30 seconds. This softened the mixture and I just took out without without stretching, since I wanted it soft. Then I served on multigrain loaf drizzled with olive oil, topped with mozzarella and tomatoes, with some more olive oil and a pinch of salt on top.
It passed the taste test and Ryan loved it. I would post a picture of the final product before eating, but… Ryan ate it all before I was able to finish this picture post. (mumble mumble) It was quite easy, quick, and delicious. Seriously, the whole thing took under an hour. Next time, I am going to make it out of whole milk (I will try half a gallon, next time) and marinade these suckers in olive oil with herbs.
