Will I be able to use UTH skimmed milk? Also do you have to use rennet to achieve a hard cheese? If so will vegetarian rennet work with the skimmed milk?
Rennet won’t work with any UHT milk, but will with any non-homogenised pasteurised milk, including skimmed. Skimmed milk does not make a decent hard cheese, neither does semi-skimmed, there needs to be a reasonable amount of fat in the cheese to make the cheese palatable, and to mature properly. A curd cheese can be dried […]
I’m making a hard cheese. I have nowhere falling in the 8-12C range where I can mature it. What are the extreme tolerances I can reasonably use? I currently have it in the top of a fridge.
Top of fridge is probably around 8/10C, so that’s fine, but it is drying in a fridge, so the cheese needs to be kept dampish.
I’ve had about three goes at making a stilton cheese at around 4lbs per go and used two recipes. After maturing for 5-6 months, although the taste of the cheese is stilton, the curd is hard and not soft and creamy as you would expect from stilton. Please can you give me any pointers where things might be going wrong?
A large (7kg) stilton is only 8-10 weeks old at point of sale, the smaller (2kg) stilton probably 6 weeks, and they will continue to dry out. A 5-6 months (20-26 weeks) stilton is 3/4 times older and is bound to be dry, particularly since it is only 4lbs to start with. Good news in […]
Could you tell me how I can achieve the correct humidity when maturing hard cheddar type cheese? How can I measure humidity?
Humidity control is difficult on a small scale. Hard rind cheese need about 80% humidity, in a fridge the humidity is probably less than 50%. An additional issue is the air movement, fridges tend to have rapid air movement, because of the fan, and this tends to crack the cheese. Probably best to put the […]
I have recently bought some annatto from you but cannot find out when to use it and how much to use. Please could you advise me? – I am making it from your hard cheese recipe that comes with the kit.
For Red Leicester 1ml/1ltr and Double Gloucester 1ml/4ltrs. Annatto should be added to the milk at least 15 minutes before renneting, and thoroughly stirred in. Large amounts of annatto will disturb rennet action.