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<DIV>My two cents, for what it's worth - I've made exactly one batch of cheese,
but it worked out great. I followed the recipe from Ricci Carrol's book
exactly, except that I used the powdered nonfat milk
plus whipping cream that Schmidling recommends on his website. Ricci
Carrol's book has a pretty extensive discussion about milk, but Jack's website
provided me a cheese milk option that I can pick up at Safeway...</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I have no idea how my cheese will taste since I need to age it for six
months, but it looked great. Good luck to you.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><A title=http://schmidling.com/milk.htm
href="http://schmidling.com/milk.htm">http://schmidling.com/milk.htm</A></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Original Message ----- </DIV>
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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>From:</B> <A
title=mailto:derekbradford@gmail.com
href="mailto:derekbradford@gmail.com">Derek Bradford</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>To:</B> <A title=mailto:cheese@hbd.org
href="mailto:cheese@hbd.org">The Cheese Makers' Digest</A> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Sent:</B> Friday, February 16, 2007 5:24
AM</DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial"><B>Subject:</B> [Cheese] Clean break/coagulation
problem -- Warning -- Long Post</DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>Hi All,<BR><BR>I've been lurking for a long time, but this is
my first post. It's<BR>long, and for that I apologize. I want to
be specific. In a<BR>nutshell, I can't get a clean break; my milk won't
coagulate. I don't<BR>know if I should be adding calcium chloride, or if
I'm just doing<BR>something else wrong entirely. My recipes have all
come from<BR>Fankhauser's pages.<BR><BR>I've been making yogurt for a long
time with excellent results.<BR>My yogurt is 3.5%, made with store-bought
homogenized milk, and is<BR>very, very thick, and as smooth as it could ever
be. I make big<BR>batches every week and they all turn out just
fine. I make labneh<BR>with nearly every batch, and it's equally
wonderful.<BR><BR>I've tried making two cheeses; once, feta, and it failed to
produce a<BR>feta, but did make a cream-type soft cheese that I ate
for<BR>weeks, and the second was Fankhauser's basic pound of cheese from
a<BR>gallon of milk recipe.<BR><BR>I have utterly failed to achieve a clean
break. I've used the freshest<BR>milk available (it hit the shelf the
day before I used it, and it's<BR>the same milk I use for yogurt all the
time.<BR><BR>I warmed the milk the night before to 20C, and let it sit,
inoculated with<BR>mesophylic starter (and I also added some mild lipase
powder for<BR>flavour (just the tiniest amount)), for about 15 hours at
20/21C. I<BR>used the mesophylic starter from the Grape and
Granary<BR>(<A title=http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/4,9888.htm
href="http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/4,9888.htm">http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/4,9888.htm</A>).
I used 1/8tsp.<BR>(Side note: when I made feta I used yogurt as a starter, but
I believe<BR>my milk had overacidified. I thought using the powdered
starter might<BR>provide for a more stable experiment this time. Bad
science, changing<BR>too many variables...I know...). The next morning I
slowly heated it to<BR>30C, and then added my rennet. I also use the
rennet from the same<BR>site (<A
title=http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/4,10199.htm
href="http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/4,10199.htm">http://www.thegrape.net/browse.cfm/4,10199.htm</A>),
and used about<BR>1/8 of a tab, perhaps more. I erred on more than
less. I mixed the<BR>rennet thoroughly, but briefly, and let it sit,
covered, for 1 hour,<BR>completely undisturbed. After one hour, I still
had a pot of liquid<BR>milk--no evidence of coagulation.<BR><BR>I have some
calcium chloride, but I'm not sure when to add it, and<BR>since I've had
strong success with yogurt, I decided to wait until I<BR>knew I needed
it. I'm not convinced it's absence is the source of my<BR>problem,
though.<BR><BR>A note about my rennet: I find that it fails to dissolve
terribly well<BR>in the water; most does, but there is (as with last time)
always some<BR>sediment on the bottom of the glass. Could this be a
significant<BR>source of error?<BR><BR>Can you offer any advice? I have
been extremely sterile; I'm also a<BR>beer and wine brewer, and I really can't
see what my problem must be.<BR><BR>Thanks all for your
help.<BR><BR>Cheers,<BR>--Derek<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Cheese
mailing list<BR><A title=mailto:Cheese@hbd.org
href="mailto:Cheese@hbd.org">Cheese@hbd.org</A><BR><A
title=http://hbd.org/mailman/listinfo/cheese
href="http://hbd.org/mailman/listinfo/cheese">http://hbd.org/mailman/listinfo/cheese</A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BODY></HTML>