I didn’t have any patience this time, and decided, after just 3 weeks, to eat my simil-Cheddar cheese.
One of the reasons of this is that I didn’t manage to mature it in a room cool enough, so certain ageing processes proceeded very quickly, turning the cheese hard enough to be ready for eating.
Here it is:
Firm on the inside, but not hard enough to be grated. With a little spicy flavour, and some bubbles, I might speculate that the some thermophile bacteria managed to thrive shortly in it, and the resulting flavour, more similar to a Leerdammer or Emmentaler than to a Cheddar would confirm.
If the last paragraph sounds intriguing, stick with this blog, as I plan to explain, in steps, a little bit of what goes behind the scenes in cheesemaking, as this is, after all, what gives any cheese its specific flavour.