Cheesepalooza Challenge 4 – Mozzarella

Well the month started with good intentions. We planned on making mozzarella and one of the optional cheeses, braided string cheese. We wanted to make braided string cheese – and we still will – as it is a traditional style of cheese for Armenians, and since my lovely wife is Armenian, it was a must. Plus if we do a good job it may provide “bonus points” with my mother in law, as she won’t have to bring it back from trips to Montréal ( I jest a bit as she has not done this for a few years as you can get it in Edmonton in a few places now).

For November, we ended up making the junket mozzarella, some chèvre and some crescenza, but no braided string cheese yet (my excuse is that I was not able to find ph test strips).

We chose the junket mozzarella, as it did not require the ph testing that the traditional required (although I did try and figure alternative testing ways, including using an aquarium test kit) and slightly less time which is a good thing when your assistant almost 7!

We used the modified recipe provided on A Canadian Foodie with Addie’s adjustment to replace the junket with rennet. We also used Vital Greens whole non-homogenized milk.

I know we always start by pouring milk in the pot, but for some reason this is one of Js favourite parts of the process, not sure why though….

We followed Mary Karlin’s recipe, with the minor alteration for having no junket, and after the resting period we ended up with some nice looking curd and lovely whey.

We cut the curds, let them rest, and then brought them up to 108 degrees F.

At this point they are stirred for awhile and the left to rest for a few minutes until they are springy and stretchable.

We then scooped them out of the whey to drain.

The curds were wrapped in cheesecloth, and left to rest on a cutting board for about 20 minutes. We had a nice slab of curd that was then cut into strips in preparation for the stretching.

We had 8 nice strips, so we stretched two strips together to end up with 4 nice mozzarella balls. The first step in the process is to dip the curd strips into the heated whey to warm them up and make them pliable.

After they are heated they are massaged into nice ball.

To keep the curds pliable requires placing them back in the 180 degree F whey once and awhile, the rubber gloves worked great for both J and dad.

Once we had a nice ball, the curds were stretched into a rope folded over and molded back into a ball. This can be done a few times, but not overworked too much otherwise you will end up with a curd puck! After they were formed, the curd balls were chilled in ice water.

We ended up with 4 nice mozzarella balls. We made the whey into a brine to add the salt to the cheese and also for storage.

We ended up with a very nice tasting mozzarella. This particular recipe suggests eating soon, or storing for up to a week in brine. I would definitely agree with eating as soon as you can, as the surface becomes softer the longer in the brine and by day 5 we removed about 1/3 of the cheese to get to the firmer area. If I had a vacuum sealer I probably would have air dried the cheese after the initial brining, and then sealed.

The following photo shows the cheese after 5 days of storage.

We ate some raw, but also wanted to test it doing what mozzarella is so great at – melting! The initial test was simply on some pita bread heated under the broiler, simple but very tasty. A couple of nights later we made some chicken parmigiana, that was very tasty.

For the November cheesepalooza tasting, we simple served the mozzarella with fresh basil. In the middle is the crescenza, which was a fairly simple cow cheese that was great with crackers.

Mozzarella Tasting Notes

Appearance: Very nice white colour

Nose: No strong aroma

Overall taste: Very pleasant, tastes like mozzarella

Sweet to salty: slightly salty

Mild to robust: mild

Mouth feel: Good mouth feel, not rubbery at all

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