Two weeks ago, French dairy consultant Ivan Larcher came to the School of Artisan Food to teach us the art and science behind making lactic cheeses - a style of cheese popular in France. Think of the Loire Valley cheeses: St Maure, Valençay, Crottin, Pouligny St.-Pierre and all the different shaped Goat's cheeses which become available in Spring.
Ivan taught us the importance of measuring the acidity development during the ripening period of the milk and how to control it at different temperatures. He explained the acidity curve - a graph to display the correlation between time and acidity in milk maturation. The theroy of a lactic set cheese is that by deveolping lactic acid over a period of time, and with the aid of the smaller amount of rennet (to stabilize the coagulation) a fragile clot will form.
Each of us dairy cadets followed a slightly different recipe, with our milk being incubated at varying temperatures, % starter, and quantity of rennet.
I made cheeses with raw Goat's milk, geotrichum candidum, .5% starter, .8% rennet, and at 16°C. This took 24 hours to acidify to the correct level, pH4.6.
I ladle the curd directly into Crottin moulds. The curds firmed up over the next 24hours and were removed from the moulds and salted 48hours from ladling.
We matured our little Goat's cheeses for 14 days , by which time they had developed a wrinkly rind with a thin creamy breakdown.
Lovely little cheeses.
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