I Made Cheese!!

This week's excitement is that I made fresh Mozzarella for a Caprese salad.  Making Mozzarella isn't hard...I needed to buy three things I didn't have around the house: Citric Acid, Rennet, and a food thermometer (the candy thermometer I own starts at 120F...for cheese you need to know when the milk reaches 50F).  I purchased my supplies at The New England Cheese Making Supply Company.  $16 dollars shipped me enough ingredients to make 24 batches of cheese.  :)  They also have a great step by step recipe.

 

I started with a gallon of whole milk, added the citric acid and rennet at all the correct temperatures, and this is what you have after about 20 minutes.  The curds has visibly separated from the whey.

 

 I used a slotted spoon to remove the curds and place them in a microwave safe bowl.  I zapped it in the microwave a few times, and then poured off any excess whey.

 Next, I pulled the cheese like taffy and wound up with my fresh mozzarella.  In this batch, I actually over-pulled the cheese.  I wound up with a string cheese rather than the nice soft mozzarella I prefer for my salads.  Oh well.  I still have 22 more batches to perfect the recipe.

Here's the leftover whey.  If I could get my hands on raw milk, I could also make butter with the cream and use the whey to make ricotta cheese.  Unfortunately in Virginia it's only legal to consume raw milk from a cow that you own.  A few entrepreneurial farms offer 'cow shares.'  For $100 you purchase a small percentage of a cow, and then you pay a monthly fee of $35 to board your cow.  Since many people own one cow, you can only rely on getting 4 gallons a month, and because I"m making cheese to save money, I have to pass on the $8.75 a gallon milk.

What do you think?  Should you all help me talk Dave into buying me a second-hand dorm refrigerator so I can move on to making more complicated cheeses like Camembert and Jarlsberg?  These are our two weaknesses at the cheese counter, and I'd love to be able to make my own.  I feel very intrepid.  Either my French palate is rearing its head, or family tradition is (my grandfather was a dairy farmer in Vermont).