Cheese making

I recently purchased a cheese making kit from a local dairy where I took a class. The directions looked easy enough, so Shianne and I decided to tackle the project of making mozzarella cheese. We were really avoiding a cleaning project and the cheese sounded like so much fun, plus we needed it for dinner.

Here is step one: We heated one gallon of milk to 88 F added the citric acid and rennet
It soon started to solidify. When I cut into it, it quickly started to separate into the curd and whey.

About 20 minutes later, I separated out all the whey and began the process of heating the cheese in the microwave and pulling it. We had to do this three times.

Shianne immediately commented on how this was like making taffy. The cheese became shiny and squeaky when we pulled it.

Finally, we are at the end result. It is now cooling down in some ice water. It was really an easy process. We worked some salt in during the final pulling stage to give the cheese some more flavor.

We had some leftover pesto from last nights lobster ravioli and pesto sauce. Pesto, cheese and chicken - sounds like the makings for some good pizza. The cheese melted perfectly. Very yummy. Lamar had his reservations about this pizza, and even commented that he would stop by and pick up a burger on his way home. I assured him that he would like it - and he did!

I think we will try ricotta cheese next. The kit will make approximately 30 batches of cheese. I see more cheese in our future.