Make the Bread, Buy the Butter - Jennifer Reese [89]
2 gallons whole milk
¼ teaspoon mesophilic culture
⅛ teaspoon Penicillium candidum mold powder
¼ teaspoon calcium chloride (optional)
¼ teaspoon liquid rennet
4 teaspoons kosher salt
1. You don’t need to sterilize everything the cheese touches, but pot, spoon, molds, mats, and hands should definitely be extra clean. In a large pot, “warm” the milk to 85 degrees F. This is not actually warm, simply less cold than milk straight out of the refrigerator. Turn off the heat.
2. Sprinkle the mesophilic culture and mold powder over the surface of the milk. Using a slotted spoon and an up-and-down motion, gently draw the culture and mold into the milk without breaking the surface. (Obviously, you have to break the surface to get the spoon into the milk, but once it’s there, try to keep it submerged.)
3. If you’re using calcium chloride, dissolve it in ¼ cup cold water. Add to the milk using the same up-and-down motion.
4. Dilute the rennet in ¼ cup cool water. Add to the milk and stir, again with the up-and-down motion. Cover the pot and leave on the stove. You want it to remain at 85 degrees F for 1½ hours. (Maintaining this temperature sounds more complicated than it is; residual heat from the burner should be enough to keep the lidded pot at around 85 degrees F. If your kitchen is very cold, you can fill a larger pot with barely warm water and place the pot of milk inside to bring the temperature up. I’ve never needed to do this.)
5. After 1½ hours, check for what cheesemakers call a “clean break.” This means that when you probe the contents of the pot with a spoon, it separates into cus-tardy curd and watery whey. It will look a bit like packaged soft tofu. If the curd is still fragile—if the mixture doesn’t separate cleanly into those two components—let it sit for a few minutes longer.
6. When you get a clean break, it’s time to cut the curd. This is hard to explain, but easy to do. Imagine the contents of the pot as a Rubik’s cube that has not yet been separated into the smaller component cubes. You want to make those cuts. Working parallel to the sides of the pot, using a long-bladed knife or thin spatula, cut a series of straight parallel lines through the curd, 1 inch apart, reaching all the way to the bottom. Now turn the pot 90 degrees. Make a second series of cuts, 1 inch apart, at a right angle to the first. From the top it now looks like a sloppy checkerboard. Next you need to make horizontal cuts through the curd. Simply reach your knife blade down to about 1 inch from the bottom of the pot and make a horizontal cut, the knife edge parallel to the bottom. Clearly you can’t cut perfect cubes this way, and you don’t need to. You’re just trying to cut the contents of the pot into relatively even pieces. Continue making these cuts at 1-inch intervals all the way to the top of the pot. Let stand for 5 minutes.
7. Very gently lift and agitate the curds with a slotted spoon for 10 minutes until they start to shrink. You are encouraging them to give up even more of their whey. If you see any large curds—these are called “lemons”—cut them in two.
8. Let the curds settle to the bottom of the pan and rest for a few minutes. Mean-while, set up the molds. On a rimmed cookie sheet, place a cooling rack. On top of that, place the cheese mats, and on top of the cheese mats, set the soup cans or molds.
9. Using a ladle, dip off whey until you see the surface of the curd. Gently ladle the curd into the molds, filling them all the way to the top. You will think this is a mistake, that these Camemberts will be much too tall. Don’t worry. They shrink. Drape the cheeses with a clean dish towel to keep out flies and let the curds drain for 2 hours at room temperature.
10. Carefully flip the molds so that the whey now drains from the other end for another 2 hours.
11. Flip again, and 2 hours later, repeat.
12. Let drain at room temperature overnight without flipping.
13. In the morning, slip the cheeses out of their molds. Sprinkle the top of each with