Tag: dairy

This is the follow up to the Caerphilly cheese. Looks and tastes pretty delicious: rich, a little funky, creamy. Super happy with it!

My recent foray into cheesemaking. From top left in the cover photo: Bel Paese, Caerphilly, Marcellin. There's a nice book called The Art of Natural Cheesemaking that I started with. His approach is very much avoiding the sterile modern approach, also found in modern beer making, and using diverse microbial cultures found in raw milk and kefir to produce interesting and characterful cheese. I used my "house" amasi culture which I've had for 18 months or so now, a South African lacto ferment that has seemed to have survived better than any other I've used.

Salmon on offer as is often the case in the winter, so I picked up a couple, cured and smoked them. Beech, cherry and hickory smoke for 12hrs. We ate one for NYE and the rest will go in the freezer. I made cream cheese and some crackers (not pictured) to go with them. Once I'd stripped the rest of the flesh after filleting them, the head and bones were roasted (12 mins air fryer max) and made into stock with a slice of konbu for some extra umami.

Picked up some discount milk during the holiday insanity and have been at it for a few days, reading and learning about cheese. On the left here are quite a few mozz balls, which I've frozen for pizza. On the right is an Italian Ligurian cheese called bel paese. The curds are pretty firm and they're not pressed. This will age in the fridge for 3-4 weeks.

First go on the outdoor oven in quite a few years, quite happy with the results. The base needed more preheating but I ran out of patience after wind kept blowing the gas out. This is 62% hydration blue Caputo, home made mozz and some German style mortadella. Took about 100s. I installed a lazy Susan and a circular stone, both worked excellently and reduced my stress levels considerably.

It's not picture perfect: a little rough, but that may just be my folding technique. The texture felt decent, proper stretchy. For lack of decent mozzarella available commercially, I figured I'd give it a go. Technique, I used mostly @frenchguycooking's recipe. As usual, I'm always surprised how little yield there is with milk products.