cheese | LivingSmall

They’re not really hairy, but I couldn’t resist the title. Sorry about the dearth of blogging — I’ve been off falling in love this spring, and well, as much as I adore you all my blog readers, the other guy is kind of distracting, in the best way possible.

However, in the meantime, my cheeses have been growing the right sort of furry white mold that you want to see on a camembert. The directions said to ripen them in the fridge, but the fridge was a little too cold for mold — so I put the cheese “cave” container in the basement, which hovers at about 55 degrees year round. In two days, I had mold! Very exciting — so I flipped the cheeses which is why you see the pattern from the plastic mat. Once the mold blooms over the whole cheese, I’ll wrap them in the cheese paper that came with the kits, then back into the fridge for another couple of weeks.

So exciting! Cheese!

Here are my first two baby camemberts. I made them last Thursday — and while the recipe was not difficult at all — it’s the same basic cheesemaking skills — heating milk, adding cultures, waiting for a clean break, cutting and separating curds from whey, and molding the cheeses. It’s not difficult.

Where the magic seems to come in is in the waiting. The cheeses are in the fridge, in their mini-cave made from a plastic storage box, and I’m waiting for the mold to form on their surfaces.I’m a little concerned that they are not entirely smooth — there are some pits where the curds didn’t settle evenly. So, we’ll see what happens as they ripen.

Cooking the milk and waiting for the curds to set took about 4 hours (most of that was waiting around). Waiting for the cheese to ripen will take 2-4 weeks. For me, this is the hard part. I am not patient. I am trying very hard not to pester the cheeses. I’ll keep you all posted.

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Tag Archives: cheese

Hairy Cheeses …

Baby Camemberts