Cheesemakers Are Us, Part III

Today in my continuing cheesemaking adventure, I failed to make a successful fresh mozzarella.  I was attempting to make the 30-minute mozzarella at the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company website.  This is the same mozzarella that Dan and I saw a member of that company make at the cheesemaking demonstration last fall.  It requires a little citric acid, heating the milk to only 90 degrees, a little rennet, and then just time working and stretching the curds to make it mozzarella.

However, after I added the rennet and let it sit, a curd barely formed.  It should have been firm enough to cut into noticeable cubes, but it wasn't even close to that.  I attempted to salvage it by heating to a little higher temp and adding a bit more rennet, but no go.  The curd just refused to form.  This could mean one of a few things:  I could have too much chlorine in my tap water, or the milk I used might have been heated too high during pateurization, or I might need to heat the milk to a higher temp before adding the rennet, or I may need to use more citric acid.  I will adjust some things, and contact my local water processing plant, and try again another day.

So instead, I decided to make ricotta.  I actually learned what ricotta is a few months ago.  It was created as a way to use up the leftover whey from the cheesemaking process.  The whey is heated to almost boiling so as to get every last bit of curd out of the whey.  The tiny curds are then carefully ladled into a cheesecloth-lined strainer and left to drain out any remaining whey.  These curds can't form together to make any regular cheese, so the curds are kept loose, and a little salt is added.  Voila - ricotta! 

Or so I thought.  After unsuccessfully attempting to salvage some curds from my milk in a strainer, I poured the whole mess back into the pot, with the whey left over from yesterday and about a pint of new milk to jump-start the process, and began the long process of heating it up to nearly 200F.  In the meantime, I sanitized a suddenly-needed ladle.  The temperature alone, and whatever acids are leftover in the cheese leftovers, are supposed to be enough to form the ricotta curd.  However, heating alone, which took forever by the way, STILL didn't produce any curds.  Frustrated, I added more rennet to the pot.  Nothing.  Then, giving up, I settled on my paneer-making technique, and tossed in some lime juice. 

Bag 'o' curds

I had to let the pot sit for a while, but I finally got some curds.  They were very tiny and delicate and not really scoop-able, so instead of ladling the curds into the cheeseloth, I dumped the whole pot in, drained it for a while, rinsed it to rid the curds of any citrusy taste (since I want ricotta and not paneer), and then hung the curds in the cheesecloth to drip out as much whey as I could get out of there.  I also mixed in a little salt.  The result is a very creamy, tiny-curd ricotta that I think will actually work alright.

My suspicion is that there is too much chlorine in our tap water, which ends up in the milk because it is used to dilute the citric acid and the rennet.  I will have to make a call and find out.  In the meantime, I will make some sort of cheesy Italian something-or-other with my ricotta.  The adventure continues...