Monday, October 24, 2011

More Stilton

On Saturday and Sunday, I made two more 4" round Stiltons.  This time, I used the recipe from the cheese recipe book I have, instead of the recipe that came with the Brie/Blue kit I purchased when I started all this.  The book recipe makes one large 7" tomme mold sized cheese weighing nearly 4 lbs.  I wanted to make two smaller rounds.  It was easy to scale back since I had the kit recipe, which uses 1 gallon of milk and a cup of cream, while the book uses 15 quarts (nearly 4 gallons) and one quart of cream.

The big difference between the two recipes is in the processing.  Once the curd is pressed into a cake overnight to drain off excess whey, the kit says to chop the curd cake, pack it into the mold and press with a weight overnight, turning the cheese regularly, before removing from the mold and putting it in the ageing container and refrigerator.  The book had me crumble the curd cake before placing in the mold.  This time, no weight to press it down.  But I have to continually turn the molds for 4 days before placing into the ageing container and refrigerator.

The looser packing of the curd crumbles should give me more air space inside the cheese to allow for more blue penicillium to cultivate inside the cheese.  This is what I was after.  I was not happy with the amount of blue inside the cheese on my first batch.  Although the first batch of Stilton was tastey, I wanted more blue veining.  Now I only have to wait four months to see if it worked.

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