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 :(
I just sold two lambs to one of the 5 Irish farmers who have dairy sheep (us included).
It's nice to know that they'll have a few years of "work" in front of them and won't go to the butcher, yet!
Maybe I'll be able to sell the other 2 to one of the other 3 farmers :)
I have been to Italy for almost three weeks and I had a great time. We spent some time in the mountains with Katy and Pietro and also with the Bigoli and my nephews. Grand! I also had lots of delicious food and came back with two salami, one of which is called "the donkey's ball". No balls in there, but very similar shape.
The sheepies were well looked after mostly by P but also by Whizzie in the last few days..
So now back to cheese making, also because two dodgy creatures broke into the old house and stole most of our precious cheese! Sorry Dario, you'll still get some though!
I finally managed to take a few pictures of my two artificial cheese cave, of the growing lambs and the first real pecorino. I liked it a lot but still need to get some feed back from more volunteers. Back then I still had an issue with the rind formation and mold control in the cave. Since then I have managed to sort it ll out and as you can see the new cheese in the small cave looks just marvellous (at least to me). Ogni scarrafone è bell' a' mamma soja (Even a coackroach looks beautiful to his mum).
On a sadder note, two of the chicks have disappeared :(
Well the workload has increased sensibly since I've started milking the 4 sheep. The lambs and Mr Fecker are almost care-free and I only need to re-fence them with the electric netting every so many days.
I basically milk 8 liters per day and process therefore 16 liters every other day. The mobile home seems to cope with all this cheese making and is still pretty tidy, but surely it's not easy to eat 5 Kg of cheese every other day :) Well, actually most of it keeps piling up in the old house (pecorini to age). Still no proper aging facilities, so I'm using my old modified fridge as a cellar and plastic containers. I'm pretty happy with the cheese/ricotta duo, although the ricotta is the only one we tasted and frankly it is amazing. The pecorini look good but we'll see how they score at the taste bud test.
The ladies have transformed themselves into munching machines and to be honest the amount of grass on the fields at our disposal is not great. The spring is late and temps have been really low for the time of the year but today it's warm and we'll be in the 20s celsius for the next 7 days! :)
I have also tried mozzarella, failed miserably on attempt number one and succeeded satisfactorily the second time around. I would like to try a blue tomorrow.
On the milking side again, surprisingly the best sheepy is Selvaggia, she has the prettiest and better shaped udder among them all and stands still forever while I milk her, one wonders if she stands paralyzed in fear but I believe she's actually very cool, strangely enough.
As the title says, thank god for the piggies, lots of whey and cheese for them from my experiments, if Whizzie didn't have them I'd have a very fat dog by now. 11 liters of whey every other day are just fine for the 2 pigs but it would have been a pain if I had to dispose of it otherwise.
off to milking in a while, more soon.
I haven't made much cheese, and surely not hard ones, in ages! So this are the five liters I milked in the last 2 days. I actually miked more than 5 liters but Boss kept kicking like mad for the first day. So there you go, a tiny Pecorino!
On another note, on day 2 the weaned lambs were already absolutely fine and dandy and eating grass like if there was no tomorrow!
Back to work now! The piggies are going to enjoy the whey!
I know, not much in common between the great Gorgonzola cheese and the clutch issues by which Opel Vivaros seem to be riddled.
But it is actually because of the failing clutch of my Opel Vivaro that I am able to post this pictures of my last creation...
You see, dear readers, I'm actually about to leave for Ireland, this time almost for good. The ferry I had to take with my Vivaro van was scheduled on the 20th and I was supposed to leave on monday. But the clutch failed and the part needed didn't come in on time. I had to postpone the ticket a few days. This has meant that I am not panicking like a little kid on the day of his dentist appointment and I can unveil what I think is my second best creation ever (out of two, clearly).
Gorgonzola!!!
I followed the recipe in the video and the cheese I got is definitely good. The only thing I have to suggest is that you go easy on the salt (original recipe is for 15 liters but I doubt anyone of you will try this with more than 5) and, above all, when you make the holes, don't use toothpicks, they are too thin, use something thicker. Without thick enough holes the molds won't be able to penetrate and grow because of the lack of oxygen.
As you can see I look happy with my cheese, having my photo taken
My baby!
Now, keep your fingers crossed for my trip. I wish I had more time to keep you updated about things in tha last weeks but it's been way too busy. Ciao for now!
There you go, with precious help from Chiara. Still a lot to improve but we got a pretty decent result :)
Got ya Mozzarella!
I'll post a recipe when I'll get it perfect.
This was done following a recipe for pecorino but with less milk (4 liters).
I barely managed to take the picture because it was finished in a blink of an eye :)
Dear friends!
I was back from Ireland on Monday the 9th but life has been busy and full of unexpected things, some of them very sad, time has been very limited. It has been a different stay this time. The enthusiasm which left us elated at the first farm visit (entirely justified by the beauty of the place and the existence of a common project) is still there but the fear of having a hugely immense task in front of us is creeping up.
The situation is in continuous evolution and the more we read the legislation the more we have to adapt to different contingencies. The timetable we thought of will still be the same, I'd like to stick with it because of the seasonality of sheep lactation but we might have to reassess other parts of the plan. I still would like to get the first animals this next autumn but I'd like to keep the initial investment under control because there are still too many technical questions which I need answers to.
These are technical points that mainly involve a series of food security checks that are compulsory by law, both on milk and cheese, and might be too heavy to sustain for a small production like ours and another series of technical issues linked to how the cheese facilities need to be designed and planned and where they can be built (on farm vs off farm).
There are also other minor issues like the possibility that we might need to pasteurise milk for some of the cheese we intend to produce...
Anyway, apart from all this, I got my hands on a very nice starter culture used to make caciocavallo and "strong ricotta" and I gave it a go last night. Unfortunately, the store bought milk I have been using for my trials has recently been giving really poor curds, too weak to get a clean cut. I had the feeling it was a question of temperature but after much trial and error it seems that it's the milk's fault.
It's time to get some decent raw milk or Calcium Chloride. I also ordered some new cheese mats and a Cheese Press! I could have built one but I simply have no time at the moment.
I'll open the second dry cheese experiment in a while...
In the mean time I'm trying to get rid of a bitch and a car (I've got two of everything!)
It’s been a
busy time, both at work and in my free time. I have finally downloaded from the camera the few pictures I had taken of
the stracchino and the result can only be seen but I can assure you that it
tasted excellent, definitely better than the stuff you but at the supermarket.
I have to
say that at this point I feel pretty confident about fresh cheeses like this
one. Problems still arise when I try hard cheeses. But that
is another post.
Doing
stracchino it’s pretty straight forward.
Inoculate 2 litres milk with starter (4 spoons of yogurt do the trick)
Bring milk
to 36°-37°C
Add rennet
in the amount suggested by the manufacturer
Keep it at
36°C for at least an hour for the curd to form (clean brake with finger). I
find that a good quality stainless steel pot with a thick bottom is perfect
because every now and then you can start the fire for 30 seconds or so on a
small fire ring. That usually does the trick without damaging the curd or
burning it.
Cut the
curd in big squares/rectangular, 8x8 cm, 1-2 cm thick. You don’t need to be
extra precise.
Let it sit
for at least another hour, until you see the squares shrinking and expelling
some whey.
Collect them
with a large ladle and put them in a container with a shape of your choice lined with cheesecloth
Let it sit overnight at room temperature
The day after, get rid of the cheesecloth, turn it upside down, put it back in the container and sprinkle salt (and in my case spices) over the top surface, put it in the fridge and repeat the day after with the other side.
Long time no post! It seems like an eternity but it was just ten days ago. I wanted to post about stracchino and a couple of caciotta experiments that I have performed but I still haven't got around organising myself and I don't have the pictures at hand. Also I had to stop making fucking cheese day and night or I'd have become like the dude in the picture above!
So I thought I'd just post a quick one to point you all cheese-mongers in the direction of a very nice blog run by the people of the New England Cheesemaking supply company.
The blog is here: http://cheesemakinghelp.blogspot.com/ and focuses on crazy people like us who started to make cheese for fun and developed quite a business with time.
I also want to spend some link-love for the guys at "Small Farm Supplies" who have pretty much all you need for a small holding and making cheese at very interesting prices, they are quick and very helpful. Not very strong on the cheese culture starters but hey, you can't have everything.
For an excellent review and explanation of starter cultures check out the Cheesemaker, excellent website because it gives a very good description of what each culture does and also gives the exact composition of bacteria in each one of them.
This is possibly the easiest cheese recipe ever, you don't even need rennet to do it and it's delicious. It takes a couple of days but the effort involved is minimal.
First thing you need to do is to prepare your mesophilic starter. This is a compound of bacteria that ferment milk at room temp. You can do it by leaving milk at room temp for 24 hrs or by inoculating a little bit of milk with the content of a probiotic drink or a yogurt. It needs to be brought to room temperature well in advance (in
the morning) to give a
chance to the bacteria to start working. Lactobacillus acidophilus does a great job and you
find it in most probiotic drinks and some yogurt but if you want to use
professional stuff you can buy a proper starter like this one
(it's enough to inoculate 150 liters of milk). If you go for yogurt or
some probiotic drink, make sure there is no Bifidobacterium because in
my short experience it does not allow the milk to curd. Streptococcus
thermophilus and bulgaricus are ok as long as there is lactobacillus
acidophilus. So, second thing you need to do is to bring a liter of pasturaised milk to 21°C in the evening and add a couple of spoons of the mesophilic starter you prepared in the morning. Leave everything at room temp and the bacteria will use the lactose in the milk producing lactic acid as a byproduct wich will lower the pH causing the milk to curd (usually between 8 and 12 hrs but could take up to 24). The amazing thing (to me) is that you get a very firm curd without rennet. So it will have probably curded by morning but if you dont have time to do anything, just leave it for when you come back.
On day 2 cut the curd along the two dimensions in cubes of 1 cm or 2. Then cut along the 3rd dimension orizzontally as in the pictures.
Let it rest for an hour.
Drain it in a colander with a cheesecloth or just a cloth that can let the whey through. Preferably in a kitchen cleaner than mine!
Hang it preferably in a cool room. The first time I did it I left it at room temp in the kitchen at 17°C and it came just fine. Let it drain for at least 24 hrs.It will be soft, spreadable and juicy.
Eat it as it is or add herbs!
I have actually prepared 2 litres and got roughly 7-800 grams of it and I prepared some with sage and onion, some with thyme and some with rosemary and garlic. If you do too, it would be good practice to sterilise the herbs in a closed jar by boiling and to let cool, add then the cheese by mixing it with a sterile spoon. It will last longer. I also left half of it as it is, it's super yummy! It will keep in the fridge for at least a week.
PS. If you have dogs, they love whey, it is a good although poor source of protein and you should feed it to them.
Oh dear! It is difficult to explain, this cheese fever that suddenly gets you, that makes you get up early in the morning to check on the strater cultures, that makes you look at your first creations aging in the cellar like if they were pets needing your love, that makes you feel like you don't have enough time to try all the recipes you'd like to try ...
I have been compulsively buying on the internet and off the internet, in the real world, I have been buying different thermometers, cheesecloth, starter cultures of all kinds, cheese moulds and alternative pressing methods, dreaming about ways to do things... Oh my! And it is soooo gooood!
First pictures in a few days.
Making cheese is really not that difficult. Making GOOD cheese is a bit more difficult. Making a living out of selling good cheese is akshully quite difficult.
To start off you don't need that much and you can find all you need online and in small shops.
I myself bought everything online and I spent not more than 60 euro (+ 70 for a fridge).
Shopping list:
Milk (5 liters approx for 1 Kg cheese, NOT ONLINE!!! :))
Rennet (animal, 250 g, 7.5 euro)
Starter culture (Mesophilic and thermophilic for different recipes, 6.5 euro each)
Cheese moulds (ricotta moulds 7.5 euro for 50, pecorino 7.5 euro for 50)
Thermometer (6 euro on ebay)
Cheesecloth (5 meters x 35 cm, 8 euro on ebay).
Old fridge to be converted into a cellar (70 euro second hand in a town nearby)
I bought most of the stuff from these guys: http://www.tecnolatte.it/pages/acquista
but I think they deliver only in Italy (Rowena, they're close to you!)
If you are in the UK there is a pretty good ebay shop which I might use in the near future, they are very nice and helpful (thanks Ann!) and the shop is called "Small Farm Supplies".
I got my Cheesecloth here, it was extremely cheap.
Regarding the Cheese cave, most people tend convert old fridges or wine cooling units by substituting the thermostat with one like this, and by adding a fogger and an hygrostat to build up humidity like in this post: the cheese cave, but for the time being I'm going to rely on the inbuilt thermostat (it looks like it could do 12C°) and the built in humidity (I'll dedicate a post next week to the cheese cave).
So far, so good. All the stuff should come in next week. So exciting!
Back to serious talking... I have been thinking about a post in which I explained what is our time schedule and what are the things needed to be done but after much thinking I came to the conclusion that it is not such a good idea, because it's way too early for that. We still haven't talked with the competent offices yet and although I have been reading the relative legislation in terms of agricultural building permissions and food business, there is still too much prospecting to be done.
The only sure thing is that whatever we'll need to do, we'll have to do it at a specific time. In fact, sheep are seasonal animals and they do not have oestrus cycles all year round.
Sheep start having regularly spaced oestrus cycles (17 - 19 days long) with the decrease of daily light (short day breeders), which means in August at the earliest (in the northern hemisphere). If they are not mated they stop cycling regularly in spring when days get longer once again. This means that in the northern hemisphere the best time to mate ewes is around October-November (it really depends on the climatic region and market needs) so that they are ready for delivery in early spring after a 5 months long pregnancy.
That's when they start producing milk.
Therefore the only two known deadlines are: i) to get a stable (or a simple shed) ready by late summer and ii) a cheese cave ready by early spring.
Everything goes around this two major deadlines and if you miss them you'll lose a whole year of learning and production.
There are also of course a ton of other things to be done like a new and upgraded electric connection, refrigeration units, a well and so on. So you can understand that P. and I have our hands tied for now, and we can't even practice or help around in nearby sheep farms because they are not producing cheese at the moment.
I have planned a trip around Christmas holidays to try and get quotes for materials so that we can get a better figure of the investment needed and I would also like to try and speak with local vet services, small business authority and food business regulators. But that is it. This was really a bummer because I feel like I'm wasting my time here, so I decided to keep myself busy and at the same time to get some experience under my belt by engaging in some cheese making at home.
The thorn apart thing you see in the picture at the top of the post is the second hand fridge that, after the due modifications, will serve as a home made cheese cave.
It's been a bit difficult recently to post and I might have lost the line of thought I was trying to follow.
I'm trying to get back on track with this post and focus on the issue we left unresolved: sheep.
I explained in a previous post how we ended up to choose dairy sheep as our main project on the farm. An important extra reason is also the fact that I'm already familiar with sheep and small ruminants in general.
We are plenty of dairy sheep in Italy and cheese-making from sheep milk has a long tradition that goes back in time to pre-Roman times.
The two main cheeses made with milk from sheep are the Pecorino in its various forms and the Ricotta (either fresh or aged). It is a typical and abundant production all along the appennini area from north to south but mainly in central Italy and Sardinia.
People producing Pecorino are also usually producing Ricotta which is obtained from boiling the whey after having made pecorino.
Italian breeds are definitely numerous but probably not that well adapted to the lush Irish pastures and the wet conditions.
There are very few dairy breeds in northern Europe and the two that could be more easily sourced would be the ever surprising East friesian and the British milksheep (which is anyway a friesian cross).
These babies are reported to produce up to 600Kg (East friesian) or 900 for the British milksheep during a lactation of up to 300 days. These figures are probably a bit optimistic because they probably refer to sheep housed in excellent conditions and fed shitloads of protein and feed-stuff while we would rely almost solely on the grazing and hay. Also we'll probably go for east friesian crosses and not pure-breed.
If you're trying to understand how much money we can make from cheese I'll tell you right now we won't get rich but P. and me should be able to live a decent life nevertheless.
Even considering a 200 Kg yearly milk production and a yield in cheese around 17% for a price of 20 Euro/Kg, each sheep should produce a minimum of 600 Euro/year. It is an estimate taking into account expenses such as vaccinations and treatments, electricity and such. It is also quite pessimistic, because in fact milk production, cheese yield and selling price should be quite higher. I've seen industrial sheep cheese in supermarkets in the area sold at 35 Euro/Kg!
Then there is the little extra from lambs and wool, although there is little money in there.
It's late, I should go to bed. More soon :) Enjoy the video
