[Cheese] Cheese texture problem

[Jack Schmidling]

Albert Ortiz wrote:
> Don't know how your dry-milk based cheeses end up, but mines always 
> fail.  I have yet to make successful use of cream with my cheeses, it makes them too
> soft.

Then something else is wrong.  Cooking temp/time, draining time, 
cheddaring, all of these things determine whether the cheese will be 
hard or soft. Pressing is just a finishing process.  Before it even goes 
into the press, the curds should be a good squeaky chew.  Most authors 
liken the texture to chicken breast and this is very much the way it 
must be before it is put into the press.

The biggest problem with commercial milk, no matter what form, is 
cutting and initial cooking.  The curd is extremely fragile and if not 
treated very carefully, the cheese will fail.  It should only be stirred 
enough to keep it from scorching on the bottom for about the first ten 
minutes.  By stirring, I mean only moving it around slowly.  Stirring in 
the normal sense will destroy it. After about 10 mins it will firm up 
and be indistinguishable from fresh milk from a cow sort of cheese.

>Which is not bad if you wanted a soft cheese, but if you are 
> pressing
> and want to make a low fat type of cheeses, try low fat milk, not the boxed
> kind, and add to it a bit of calcium chloride.

Low fat cheese is an oxymoron.  It simply can not be made at home.  It 
will always be hard and unpalatable.

>If i wan full fat cheese, i
> use regular milk.

Again, if it is homogenized, you will get bricks if you try to make 
cheddar but for different reasons.  Most of the fat in homogenized milk 
will be lost in the process and result in a "low fat" cheese as above. 
If you start with low fat milk and add cream you can produce an 
excellent cheddar if you do everything else right.

js

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