When we had our weekend in San Francisco, one of the souvenirs we brought home for Lulu was a cheese-making kit we bought at Heath Ceramics outlet. She's been asking to make cheese ever since and we finally bit the bullet and bought the gallon of whole milk cheese from Straus Creamery required to make it.
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| All ready to go! |
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| It's cheese-making time! |
First off was dissolving the rennet in unchlorinated water and the citric acid in different unchlorinated water. Then, we had to carefully heat up the milk to a certain point and add in the rennet and citric acid and definite temperatures to coagulate the milk proteins together.
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| Lulu was an excited helper...up to a point! |
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| curds and whey |
Once that was done, we had to strain out the curds from the whey before heating up the curds (carefully!) in the microwave to stretch them into mozzarella cheese (after adding a bit of salt).
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| strained cheese, ready for the microwave |
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| stretched cheese, ready for a rest in the fridge... |
The good news is that we still have LOTS of rennet, citric acid, and cheese salt, so we can make more cheese than is healthy to eat! Next up, homemade ricotta....
