Say Cheese!

It's been a cheese-y weekend. We made two batches of mozzarella, one Friday night and because we just weren't that satisfied with one pound of mozzarella, we made a second batch Saturday morning. But we made VAST improvements with the recipe and technique between the two, so here's the recipe that worked and lessons learned:

Home-made mozzarella:

1. Take 1 gallon whole milk out of the fridge and let it reach 50ºF (We used Clover milk, and it was tasty!)
2. Dissolve 1 tsp citric acid in 1/4 C tap water and stir into the milk for 1 minute. Sprinkle in another teaspoon of citric acid in the milk and stir an additional minute.
3. Add 2 tablespoons yogurt (aka "theromophilic culture") to the milk, first diluting it in some of the milk so it spreads evenly.
4. Warm milk to 90ºF and add 1/4 tablet vegetable rennet, dissolved in 1/4 C tap water. Stir briefly (15 sec).
5. Turn off the heat. Cover and don't touch it for 30 minutes!
6. Check for curd formation. Our milk didn't form the beautiful custard texture that I saw in other online tutorials, more like a solid mat of tiny curds, but it did form a clean break when I poked it with one finger.
7. If you see a clean break, cut the curds into 1/2 inche squares with a knife.
8. Heat the milk to 105º with occasional stirring.
9. Turn off the heat and let sit for 5 minutes while the curds expel some of their whey.
10. Scoop out the curds with a fine-mesh sieve and ladle them into a cheesecloth-lined colander. Let drain for 10-15 minutes, or until it stops dripping all over the place.
11. Transfer curds to a microwave-safe bowl.
12. Microwave 30 sec, then press out the whey.
13. Microwave 15 sec, then press out the whey.
14. Add salt to taste, then knead the dough and stretch it. Microwave for a couple of seconds if the cheese starts breaking instead of stretching. You want it hot enough to be malleable.
15. When it is stretching nicely, you're done! Form it into balls and microwave it.

Ok, so these are the things we learned between the first and second batches:

* 1/4 rennet tablet is plenty for 1 gallon of milk. The first recipe we used called for 1 whole tablet, but that is so overkill.
* Moister cheese is better cheese - this was acheived by heating the curds at 105ºF for a shorter period of time (5 min instead of 20 min) and not being so forceful about getting all the whey out during the microwave steps. Our first batch was a little plasticky but our second batch was chewy like a dream.
* Adding yogurt makes for a tastier cheese. Ideally we would incubate the yogurt with the milk for longer at 90ºF (like an hour) before adding the rennet for more flavor development, but we were in a hurry. But even with the short incubation, I think it gave the mozzarella a deeper flavor.

For each batch, after two hours of work we ended up with a solid pound of fresh, tasty mozzarella. Not bad for $4 of milk!