Cheese Making In NW Ohio

Maybe this should be in another forum, but our milk might be a little closer to the farm than others, and we had to forage for rennet, so I'll put it here.

After we got done with chores & breakfast Saturday morning, we headed towards Grabill, Indiana on a rennet quest. There is a large Amish community over there, and we figured our best bet for finding it on the shelf would be one of their little stores, scattered around. We had searched everywhere in this area, nobody, not even the health food stores, carries it anymore. We could have ordered it from the internet, but we were looking for instant gratification.

Anyhoo, we started the process after we got home Saturday afternoon. I didn't take pictures of all the steps, pretty much just looks like a pan of milk until you get to this stage:



These are the mozzarella curds fresh out of the pot. It took longer to coagulate than we thought and we ended up finally getting them out of the whey at midnight Saturday. We put them in the fridge until Sunday afternoon, when we finished the process.

Sunday, we reheated the curds and got them squished back into a lump, then we stretched and folded it until we got the finished product.

Success:



After reading up on the mozzarella making, we discovered that ricotta cheese is made from the leftover whey. The next step was easy, just leave the pan of whey sit out for 12 to 24 hrs so it could acidify some more.

The next step is to heat the whey to 220 degrees F, then letting it sit and cool. Once again, we failed to calculate the time needed for a pan of whey to cool, so I was up until after midnight, again, dipping the fine curds off the pot, and straining them.

This morning, we have success:



This is what's left of the gallon of milk we started out with, a little over a half gallon of whey:



We ended up with about 12 oz of Mozzarella, a big cup of Ricotta, and enough whey to give the chickens a little extra energy for a few days.

Looks like a small pan of lasagna is on the menu for tomorrow.

Thanks for following along, to the bottom of the thread. This is what happens at our house, when it quits snowing long enough that the driveway doesn't need cleaned out every other day. Looks like I'll be back on the tractor tomorrow, opening things back up after today/tonight's 3"-5" and 30 mph winds. I still like winter, but I'm getting a little tired of moving it around.

Tim

Very cool!

I ordered the double-strength liquid rennet from Amazon (organic vegetable rennet). 1/8 tsp per gallon of milk (2oz. bottle should be good for 100lbs of cheese if my math is right).

We make burrata, which is the mozzarella recipe with some of the grainy curds reserved (about 1/3 cup). Mix some heavy cream into the curds and form the mozzarella ball around it. The end product has a lighter center that's spreadable.

It shouldn't take that long for the curds to form. It's about 15 minutes from adding rennet to the milk setting and then another 15 minutes of stirring for optimal curd formation.