{"id":863,"date":"2015-10-25T23:36:37","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T06:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/?p=863"},"modified":"2016-07-11T09:16:45","modified_gmt":"2016-07-11T16:16:45","slug":"farmhouse-cheddar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/?p=863","title":{"rendered":"Farmhouse Cheddar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today, since Doc and I had already taken that cheese making class, I decided to make some farmhouse cheddar today!<\/p>\n<p>Since we are still experimenting with all the factors, Doc and I decided to make four little cheeses instead of one big cheese:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Pasteurized milk, aged 4 months<\/li>\n<li>Pasteurized milk, aged 8 months<\/li>\n<li>Raw milk, aged 4 months<\/li>\n<li>Raw milk, aged 8 months<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<figure style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"Cheese making\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/docpopular\/22457003056\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5652\/22457003056_3375afecd7_z.jpg\" alt=\"Cheese making\" width=\"640\" height=\"478\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Stirring the curds in a warm water bath (aka my sink). The pot on the right has the raw milk, the pot on the left has the pasteurized milk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>These were the only variables, though. All cheese permutations were made from non-homogenized Jersey cow&#8217;s milk. I&#8217;m hoping that the pasteurized milk cheese tastes just as good as the raw milk cheese, because raw milk is incredibly expensive (makes sense why it would be, having a much shorter shelf life, but still).<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 458px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"Cheese making\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/docpopular\/22295011290\/in\/photostream\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5701\/22295011290_4505714646_z.jpg\" alt=\"Cheese making\" width=\"458\" height=\"640\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Breaking up the curds into little pieces and salting them, after the first draining step.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I could really tell the difference between the two milks, though. You need to add calcium chloride to pasteurized milk in order to use it for cheese, otherwise it won&#8217;t form a firm enough curd. So there&#8217;s that. But the pasteurized milk whey was a very bright brilliant yellow, whereas the raw milk curd was a much duller yellow, almost a greyish yellow in comparison. I do not know why this would be. You can see the color difference in the photos, but it seemed even more dramatic in person.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"Cheese making\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/docpopular\/22456951726\/in\/photostream\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm1.staticflickr.com\/616\/22456951726_a9b8f8b7c6_z.jpg\" alt=\"Cheese making\" width=\"640\" height=\"458\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">One of the cheeses after the first pressing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>When they&#8217;re done aging, we&#8217;ll taste them in side-by-side comparisons and decide if the raw milk is worth the extra cost. I wanted to age one of the test cheeses for over a year, but Doc suggested that since these are just tiny test cheeses, we should do a shorter aging process so we can start on the large-batch cheeses (to age over a year) sooner.<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 640px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"Cheese making\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/docpopular\/22296124169\/in\/photostream\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/farm6.staticflickr.com\/5693\/22296124169_2776a863cc_z.jpg\" alt=\"Cheese making\" width=\"640\" height=\"458\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">We made improvised cheese molds by cutting slits into old salsa containers for the whey to drain through while they got pressed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The bacteria we used were<em> lactococcus lactis subsp. lactis<\/em> and <em>lactococcus lactis subsp. cremoris<\/em>. I&#8217;ve read that <em>Streptococcus thermophilus<\/em> is being used more and more in industrial cheddar production, but it wasn&#8217;t present in the little culture packet we bought.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll see how it turns out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, since Doc and I had already taken that cheese making class, I decided to make some farmhouse cheddar today! Since we are still experimenting with all the factors, Doc and I decided to make four little cheeses instead of one big cheese: Pasteurized milk, aged 4 months Pasteurized milk, aged 8 months Raw milk, &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/?p=863\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Farmhouse Cheddar&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[370,226,227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cheesemaking","category-cooking","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":864,"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.certainly-strange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}