Cheesy day
This morning I stopped over at my friend Anita's house and picked up a little over 2 gallons of fresh, unpasteurized goat milk. She's got 5 goats in milk right now and is banking about 1.5 gallons a day.
Got it home and started to turn it into cheese. I decided to do a simple lactic cheese so I picked up some cultured buttermilk and pulled out the rennet. I warmed the milk up to 86 deg F in a hot water bath and added a 1/2 cup of well shaken buttermilk. This was mixed in well and allowed to sit for 6 hours. Then I added an 1/4 of a rennet tablet that had been crushed and mixed with non-chlorinated water so that it was hydrated before it hit the milk. If I had pasteurized milk I would have added the rennet along with the culture but as this is non-pasteurized and has about 7% butterfat I needed to hold off to allow the fat to incorporate better into the curd when it set up.
The pot is sitting culturing away right now and will hopefully set up before I have to leave for work tomorrow morning. If it has then I'll ladle it into my molds, I have 3 valencay (truncated pyramids) and a ricotta mold waiting. I've also got a larger basket mold if needed. If it hasn't set up then I'll have to wait until I get home, it will just have a little more sour bite to it when it's done.
These should be ready to eat within 10-4 days.
The super cool part about this? It's period.
:)
Got it home and started to turn it into cheese. I decided to do a simple lactic cheese so I picked up some cultured buttermilk and pulled out the rennet. I warmed the milk up to 86 deg F in a hot water bath and added a 1/2 cup of well shaken buttermilk. This was mixed in well and allowed to sit for 6 hours. Then I added an 1/4 of a rennet tablet that had been crushed and mixed with non-chlorinated water so that it was hydrated before it hit the milk. If I had pasteurized milk I would have added the rennet along with the culture but as this is non-pasteurized and has about 7% butterfat I needed to hold off to allow the fat to incorporate better into the curd when it set up.
The pot is sitting culturing away right now and will hopefully set up before I have to leave for work tomorrow morning. If it has then I'll ladle it into my molds, I have 3 valencay (truncated pyramids) and a ricotta mold waiting. I've also got a larger basket mold if needed. If it hasn't set up then I'll have to wait until I get home, it will just have a little more sour bite to it when it's done.
These should be ready to eat within 10-4 days.
The super cool part about this? It's period.
:)