Blue Vein #1

| April 1, 2015 | Cheese | 1 Comment

Todays cheese is a blue cheese, one of my favourites…

Ingredients

  • 10l of non-homogenised fresh milk
  • 0.488g of Flora Danica starter
  • 2 skewer tips (1 drop) of blue mould spores
  • 2.5ml of 50% CaCl solution
  • 2.8ml of 140 IMCU/ml rennet
  • 10g of salt

The trick with a blue cheese is having a curd that doesn’t knit back together into a solid mass, but rather one that partially knits so you have lots of cracks and crevices for the mould to grow in. The process I followed was from the cheeselinks book with a few modifications – starter was changed to Flora Danica and starter was added using Direct Vat Set.

Some pictures of the process FYI

 

Blue Vein - Freshly Cut Curds
Freshly Cut Curds. it’s about 2 hours into the process by this stage.
Blue Vein - Curds in Hoops
Blue Vein – Curds in Hoops. 4 hours in.
Blue Vein - after draining overnight in the cheese hoop.
After draining overnight in the cheese hoop. Notice how the curds haven’t quite knitted back together.
Blue Vein - pierced and in it's ageing container
Pierced and in it’s ageing container. The cheese is pierced to allow air to get inside = the blue mould needs oxygen to grow.
Blue Vein - Ageing pots in the cheese 'cave'
Ageing pots in the cheese ‘cave’. The pots help keep the humidity really high (95%) which the blue mould needs to grow.

Now I just have to wait 6 weeks for the mould to grow and do its thing…

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