homemade cheese
Heat the milk gently until it reaches 32 ° C( 89 ° F).
Add the rennet to cooled, boiled water.
Add the rennet. This is best added in about a tablespoon of cool boiled water, and stirred in for about two minutes. Cover the pan and leave for about an hour. Try to keep the cheese around the same temperature during this process.
How do you know the cheese is set?
Place a clean sterile knife into the cheese and twist it. The curd should break, leaving a gap which quickly fills with whey. If this is undefined or sloppy, leave the milk to set for longer.
Cut the curds
You need to cut the curds into 1 cm( half inch) sort of cubes. It’ s not completely possible because the knife doesn’ t go in at 90 degrees, but small cube-like funny shapes are fine. I suppose you might call them pyramidal rhomboids.
Cook the curds
Apply very gentle heat, and don’ t leave the pan, and raise the temperature to 42 ° C( 106 ° F). From time to time you will need to stir the curds, VERY gently, you don’ t want them to fall into a mush. Take about 20 minutes over this, slowly increasing the temperature, and once at that temperature, leave them to stand for another 20 minutes.
As the curds cook, they will lose some of their whey, and this will make the cheese more easy to drain and more stringy too.
Drain the curds
Using a slotted spoon, transfer the spoon into a muslin and allow to drain until no more whey comes out. This might take an hour, and you can hang the muslin from a hook over a bowl.
Load the curds into a draining sack or muslin cloth to drain.
Cooking out the whey and stretching
Sprinkle your salt over the cheese and mix gently with clean fingers.
You will have curds that need to be microwaved for 40 seconds a time- removing the whey each time
You want to get rid of as much when as you can- though you will remember that mozzarella has a lot of whey still in it. What you need to do is transfer the cheese into a large heat proof bowl and then warm in the oven
for ten minutes. Keep the oven at its lowest setting.
You will find more whey has come out. Give the cheese a squeeze, gently, and pour off the whey. Return to the oven and repeat the ten minute cooking- you can leave the oven door open if your oven is too hot. Keep pouring off the whey.
You should find that after about three sessions of this the cheese starts to become stringy when you lift a portion of it. When this happens start to gently, and not too far, stretch the cheese, reforming it into a ball and stretching again, for about 5 minutes.
You will see the surface of the cheese become shiny, and when this happens it is ready.
Alternative route
Salt the cheese as before and then squeeze into one or two balls.
Stretching the cheeses
Plunge them into hot water, about 70C, for 30 seconds, remove and gently squeeze out whey. Reform into a ball and plunge again. After about three or four attempts you will find the cheese starts to become stringy. Finish off as above.
Keep your mozzarella in a covered bowl and use in a week.