Perfecting chevre
After some research and great input from our readers, I decided to make a few changes before repeating my neufchatel/chevre
endeavor. First, even though the instructions called for two drops of
liquid rennet in my half-gallon recipe, raw goat milk is notorious for
not needing nearly as much thickening agent --- pure milk is just very
alive. So this time around I backed off to one drop of rennet, looking
for more of a soft cheese consistency instead of the more chewy cheese I
ended up with last time.
I also decided to try to
boost the flavor with a bit more buttermilk (three tablespoons instead
of two) and a much longer culturing period (24 hours instead of 6,
although I should mention that the weather was much cooler during round
two). After that elongated culture period, there was quite a bit of
clear whey on top of the curd, and the curd had also begun to pull away
from the walls of the pot. This is all an effort to give the bacteria
more time to work, since I suspect microbial byproducts are what gives
soft cheese most of its flavor.
Finally, I drained the
cheese the right way for four hours instead of squeezing out the whey,
and I upped the salt to 0.75 teaspoons. The result? Nearly perfect! The
salt was too much --- I'll be going back down to half a teaspoon next
time around --- and I think the culturing period might have been just a
hair on the long side as well. But the flavor was much more full-bodied
than last time and the cheese felt much moister rather than dry and
crumbly. Success!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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