Jersey Mozzarella

My Cheesy quest for the perfect cheese has "shepherded" me to Twinbrook Creamery. 
Twin Brook Creamery raises purebred
registered Jersey Cows. What does this mean to the cheese maker? Well for one thing your cheese will cost more but you will have amazing cheese. Jersey cows produce milk with a higher protein and butterfat content that will immeasurably enhance anything you make with it namely cheese. This farm is amazing. They use no synthetic hormones that artifcially enhance milk production. This farm does not use commercial fertilizer or pesticides so these cows feed naturally in an almost perfect environment.
  

So now that I have the perfect milk for my cheesy quests I should be able to make some better than average cheese, at least I hope so. As always there is a learning curve to cheese making and it's not only tied to your technique but the particular milk you might be using. This milk should jump start my cheese making a bit so I am going to attempt Mozzarella once again and lets hope I have superior results. BTW- This is the fast way to make Mozzarella..... and some call it 30 min Mozzarella but don't believe them it takes longer than that. Basically using an acid and rennet. The traditional way is way more complex and that will be one of my next projects. My first attempt at Mozzarella can be found HERE. 

I just had to post this picture of the milk being poured into the pot. It looks, smells and taste superior to anything I have ever drank.  

Anyhow if you look at the picture to the left I decided use my 40 Quart Stock pot with a large colander on the bottom to support my Milk holding vessel. I also attached a Sous-Vide Machine which will help give me precise control over the water temperature. Raising the temp of the milk slowly is very beneficial to cheese making. 

 

Better pictures of my setup.

Following instructions meticulously to ensure success....maybe. 

• First thing I did was to dissolve 1/4 of the rennet tablet in 1/4 of Chlorine free water. 
• Mix 1 1/2 tsp citric acid into 1 cup of water until acid is dissolved. Pour mixture into large pot.
• Add 1 gallon of milk to the pot and stir vigorously with slotted spoon while
  heating milk to 90 degrees. 
• Take pot off the burner. Slowly stir in the rennet with an up and down motion with the slotted spoon for approximately 30 seconds. 
• cover the pot and let sit undisturbed for 5 minutes. If after 5 minutes the cured is still soft and whey is too milky let if for a few more minutes. (I ended up letting it sit for extra minutes.)
• Cut the cured with a knife. Make a checkered pattern. You want to end up with even sized curds.
• Put back on stove and slowly heat it while moving the curd with the spoon back and fourth. If you are to agressive you could end up losing flavor and the butter fat will seep out.
• Heat to 110 degrees.
• Take pot off burner and stir slowly for 2-5 min. More stirring will make a firmer cheese. This step may not be needed. Jury still out. I think it depends on the milk and the variables to a particular milk. 
• Heat a pot (or whey) to 185 degrees. Ladle curds into a colander and folding them together gently toward the center draining off the whey as you go. 
• Dip colander into heated pot (185 degrees) and using a slotted spoon to fold curds back into the center until they become stretchy. This happens when curds reach 160-170 degrees. If this step is overdone you could end up with a dryer cheese.
• Add some salt and shape into desired shape.
• After you have formed a ball drop into cold water to bring down temp. This cooling step is important to prevent a grainy texture.

This is what I did..............

Slowly heating water to 90 degrees. I set Sous-Vide to 110 degrees and slowly raised temp of milk. As the temp of the milk approached 85 degrees I added ice to the Sous-Vide vessel and brought the temp of the water bath down to 92 degrees and slowly raised the temp of the milk up the last few degrees very very slowly. At this point you are suppose to take milk off the heat source but all I did was lower temp of Sous-vide machine. 

At this point I added rennet and waited for the magic to happen. Wow after 5 minutes a magical thing happened. I created curds. The whey separated well into the curds. 

Testing the curd...I tested the curd by pulling the curd away from the pot with a spoon with the hope of curd formation and clear whey. Success. 

After the curd was formed I used a long knife and cut curd into one inch pieces using an up and down movement making sure knife reached bottom.

The next step of the process was to raise the temp of the Curd/Whey to 110 degrees while stirring. Having a Sous-Vide made this very simple to do. After the curds hit a 110 degrees I lowered the temp of the Sous-Vide and stirred for 2 minutes.

Using a slotted spoon transfer curds to a colander and drain off excess whey. Folding the curds on top of themselves helped release lots of the whey. 

I heated the pot of whey up to 175 degrees and used this to heat the curds for stretching. The curds will begin to stretch well when heated to about 160-170 degrees. After a few stretches you can form into a ball. The more you work the cheese the more likely it will become dry. Add salt during the stretching phase.

After a few stretches I formed into a ball. There were a couple of times where I had to submerge the cheese back into the water because the temp became to low and it began to tear. After it was fully heated and stretched out I formed into a ball. 






Submerging into ice bath to cool it down rapidly. This will produce a smooth consistent cheese. 

Some final thoughts- Overall this cheese was better than the first. I still have so much to learn. The curds in this cheese were 500% better than the first batch which was due to the high quality milk I used. I will never use anything other than Jersey Cow milk from now on. How did the cheese turn out? Ok guess. Flavor was decent but not great and a little dry for my taste. Some things to consider. Maybe less Citric Acid..reduce by 1/4 tsp. When the temp hits 110 do not stir for 2 minutes which will reduce the cooking hence more moisture. Less folding too will help. Back to the drawing board.  

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