I'm almost ashamed of myself but I'm thinking of getting more sheep: http://www.muttonbone.com
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Thursday, 3 October 2013
humidity in cheese making
Well well,
humidity is a very important factor in cheese making, mainly in aging, because to get your cheese to age properly within the expected time frame, you need the humidity to fall within a certain range. For example for my pecorino the best is around 85%.
But in the specific case of pecorino, but also other cheeses, humidity is also important in a step that I always took a bit for granted: rind formation. I never had any issues so far and rind for pecorino it's formed after soaking in brine by simply letting the cheese to air dry for one or two days, depending on humidity in the air.
There. In the past couple of weeks we've had so much humidity that I cannot get the rind to form at all. The cheese stays wet and finally after a few days gets covered with slime. Not nice. I do not like slime on my cheese.
It's the awful combination of high precipitation and high temperatures. This will be a challenge next year, I doubt we'll have such a dry summer in the next 30 years :(
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