Month: October 2016

Bel Paese Italico

Bel Paese (Italian for “Beautiful Country”), or Italico, is a relatively recent cheese. It was invented by Egidio Galbani (founder of one of the biggest industrial cheese-making companies in Italy) in 1906, as a response to the overwhelming quantities of French cheeses found in the shops in Milan. That’s where the vaguely nationalistic name comes from.

It’s not a particularly difficult cheese to make, which suits both the home and the industrial cheesemakers. It is a fresh cheese, which goes under a short period of maturation. I took inspiration from two recipes: one from Giallo Zafferano and one from Atlante Caseario.

As usual, start by preparing some brine, as you will need it later. For this recipe use 3 liters of water and 333g of salt, bring it to the boil, and let it cool until ~10C.

Do the usual trick: about 8 pints of milk with 70g of yogurt, bring this to 39C and let it cool for about 20 minutes.

At this stage, add rennet, cover up, and wait for 40 minutes. Break the curd in 4x4cm cubes, cover again, and let it set for 10 minutes. After this, take a whisk and give the whey and curd a good stir.

Wait about 5 minutes to let it gently set, then start filling your molds. You might use a cheese cloth if there is too much whey.

It’s time to stew the curd. Place it as usual in the switched off oven to drain the whey, as seen for example in my Crescenza recipe. In this case, I’ve put quite a bit of hot water below to make sure temperature and humidity are high.

Turn it over after 30′, then after 60′ from the first turning it, then after another 60′, then after another 60′. Wait 30′ and put it in brine for 4-5 hours, after which you can put the cheese in the molds, and in the fridge, covered.

For the first 3 days, turn it over twice a day, throw away the whey, and if the surface of the cheese is too wet, dry it with a cloth.

After this, turn it over every 1-2 days. Your Bel Paese is ready to eat after 20 to 40 days.

UPDATE: Two weeks later, this is how it looks. I’ve kept turning it every 1-2 days. It’s definitely more “wet” than crescenza, so I’ve also had to dry it a little with a clean cloth sometimes.

Tags belpaese, galbani, italico

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Mozzarella (with cow milk)

Post author By puntofisso
Post date October 25, 2016
No Comments on Mozzarella (with cow milk)

When I decided to move to the UK, one of the first issues I thought was the lack of “proper” mozzarella. Coming from Puglia, a region known for an extensive production of cow-milk mozzarella, I was truly addicted.

As a consequence, mozzarella was one of the first cheeses I researched into; and, as difficult as it sounds, it is entirely possible to make mozzarella at home.

It’s not easy, but with some practice it will start becoming clear what to do. The main complication of making mozzarella is the requirement of the curd to mature in acidic whey for some time. Maturation in acidic whey causes the curd to become elastic when brought to the right temperature, giving mozzarella its texture. As much as science gives some hints as to the right moment to stop the maturation, this is mostly down to experience as it changes with milk, temperature, density of the curd, and loads of other variables.

Before you embark making mozzarella, remember you need some whey from your previous cheesemaking adventure. Ideally, you will make some cheese a couple of days before and let the whey spend 24h at room temperature so it gets a bit acidic. pH testing is ok, although it’s not too accurate at this scale. I do use some testing papers, and as my whey had pH 6.1, I brought it down by adding some citric acid.

You will proceed as usual mixing some yogurt into about 3lt of milk (for example as seen in my Crescenza). Bring the milk to 37-39C, switch the heat off and wait for 20min.

Meanwhile, make sure your whey is at about pH 5-5.5. If higher, you need to add some citric acid.

pH indicator sticks are not great, but they work.

Wait for the milk to get down to 32C, add 1.5 cups of acidic whey into the milk, add rennet in the quantity advertised on its label, cover and wait for about a hour.

At this stage, break the curd into 4x4cm cubes, cover again, and wait for 15 minutes. Break the curd again. It’s time to put the curd to mature. This should be done at relatively high temperature (30C) and humidity. I use the usual technique of putting the pan in the switched off oven, checking here and then that the temperature stays around 30C.

Every here and then I check the pH. On this occasion, it started at about 6.1, was down to 5.4 after about 2 hours, and finally 5 after 3 hours. If you want to speed things up, you can add citric acid, but this is an operation that needs to last 3-5 hours in order to produce its results: without some time spent in acidic whey, the mozzarella paste will not be elastic enough.

Now, be careful as you’re going to work with scalding water. Bring some water to 90C: just short of boiling and keep it at that temperature. What you’re going to do next is to take a little bit of curd, soak it in the hot water, then work it (probably with a some tools first, then by hand) as if it were play dough. The combination of acidic whey and hot water will make the curd become elastic, and you will pull it, create a little pocket, and push some paste inside the pocket.

It sometimes helps to take the curds out of the whey, but just do it minutes before you start. The setting looks like in the following photo. The pan on the right contains brine or whey in which you will keep the mozzarella balls. Make sure it’s cold, possibly ~10C.

What I do to simplify my life: I use a little filter, or cheese cloth. I put some curd in it, then lower the filter in the hot water, and start touching the curd with a wooden spoon. When I feel it’s ready, after 10-15 seconds, i take it out, let the water drip through the cheese cloth or filter, and work the paste by hand, being very careful not to burn myself.

Throw the mozzarella in the cold whey/brine. They are ready to eat!

Tags mozzarella

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Crescenza

Crescenza is a type of Stracchino (in my future plans). It differs from it because of a shorter maturation time: Crescenza doesn’t go through the 20-30 days of (cold) maturation prescribed for Stracchino, and it is ready to eat after about a week. It is quite creamy, but less creamy than Stracchino, which is generally spreadable.

It is not too difficult to make at home, and its cold maturation allows the cheese to develop an acidic flavour while maintaining its softness.

A short review of the ingredients: as usual, I use animal rennet. The shopping list is simple:

3.5lt milk
rennet
100ml cream
50g strained yogurt

Before you start, prepare some brine. Although it is sufficient to fill a pan with 3 lt of water and putting in 150-300g of pure salt, I recommend you let the water boil and then cool down. The brine needs to be used cold (room temperature will do in most cases, but bear in mind it will take hours to cool down once you boil it).

To begin with, fill a cup with some milk and put the yogurt into it. Make sure it’s perfectly mixed in the milk.

Put the rest of the milk in a pan, add the cream, mix, and bring the milk to 39C. At this point, switch off the heat and pour in the milk/yogurt solution, covering it up. This will encourage the bacteria in the yogurt to start some fermentation process. Now wait until the temperature goes down to 32C, add the rennet and cover up again.

After about 60 minutes, the milk will have curdled. As usual, this varies, but let’s say you know by now that the curdled milk is ready to be cut when it’s a bit like a creme caramel.

Cut the curd in large cubes of 4-5cm, and don’t mix or disturb them. Cover up again, and wait 20 minutes.

After this, the curd will have started separating from the whey.

Give it a good stir, then start filling your molds. If there is a lot of whey, you can also filter using a cheese cloth.

One good suggestion is to filter and store the excess whey, as this is useful for the preparation of other cheeses. If you are not making, say, mozzarella in the next few days, you can also freeze it.

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It’s time to do the so-called stewing (stufatura in Italian) of the curd. Interestingly, I haven’t found a proper English equivalent. This operation consists of leaving the curds to drain for some hours in a high temperature / high humidity environment. What many home cheesemakers do is to leave the curd to drain in the switched-off oven, making sure the temperature stays around 30C, and putting some equally warm water below the cheese.

During the next few hours you will need to turn the curd around 3-4 times. The first after 30′, then after 60′, and again after 60′. After a few hours, the curd will have lost most of its whey.

At this point, let’s prepare the crescenza for the cold maturation. This involves storing it in brine, which you will have prepared before hand. Leave it in there for a couple of hours.

We’re basically done. Put the molds on a cheese mat (or something else that allows some airflow), wrap them in cling film and store them in the fridge. You will need to turn them around twice a day for the first couple of days, then just once a day. This will let some more whey out of the cheese, which you will throw away once a day.

After 5-6 days, you can wrap them in cling film, oven paper or, better, the waxed cheese paper you find in specialised shops

After 7-10 days from preparation, Crescenza is ready to eat. Enjoy!

Tags crescenza