Playing with fermentation

Yesterday, our friends Jim and Beth Saxe brought us some "fresh from the cow" whole milk.  Man, I'm excited.  So, I decided to spend the day making "fermented" food.

You see, my friend Gena Stout brought me a kombucha "mother" last week.  And it's been fermenting for the past 8 days, so it's time to remove some of the liquid and refresh it.

OK first to the milk.  I'm going to make it into cheese.  I usually get my milk from my friend JoAnn McElderly.  But she has a large family and so I've kinda been squeezed out.  So when Beth offered to pick up my jug and bring me some milk I was very enthusiastic!  Yes Yes Yes!

I usually make a batch of mozzarella cheese, then process it a second time and make ricotta.  The left over whey goes into a batch of bread.

But today I decided to try a new recipe.  Feta is a cheese we really like, so I decided to try making it.

I get all my cheese making supplies from The New England Cheese Making Company.  Here's the link to their site.  New England Cheese Making Company

I decided to learn to make cheese after Gena came over one day and taught me how to make mozzarella and ricotta using the microwave.  That was a fun day!  And boy that cheese is tasty!  That's when I decided to get my own cheese making supplies and some books.  I started with the Complete Home Cheese Making kit.  Complete Home Cheese Making Kit.  Don't forget to order red wax if you want to make some hard cheese.

Later, I also got the The Deluxe Goat Cheese Set Deluxe Goat Cheese Set.

The recipe I'm going to follow today for Feta is found on page 7 of their little handbook from the Home Cheese Making Kit.

Feta Cheese
1 gallon whole mike
1 packet Mesophilic direct set culture
1/2 rennet tablet crushed and dissolved in 1/4 cup cool water
Cheese salt for brine

I started by heating the milk slowly to 86F using the indirect heat method.

Heating the milk

I then added the started culture and stirred.  I kept the milk at this temperature for 1 hour.

The culture is very important.  Different cheese are the result of different cultures.  This direct set culture gives the milk the distinctive flavor associated with Feta cheese.  Having the right culture for the cheese you want to make is very important.  After making this batch of cheese, I need to order more of this particular culture.

While I was holding the milk and culture at 86F, I crushed my vegetable rennet tablet and dissolved it in water.  I only needed 1/2 a tablet.

Here it is, dissolved.














After an hour had passed, I added the rennet to the milk and allowed it to rest for another 1/2 hour.

Milk with culture and rennet resting at 86F

While the milk was resting, I started working with my kombucha.  I hadn't tried kombucha before.  Gena is a real fan of it, so I thought I'd give it a try.  Here's a Wikipedia article about kombucha.  Kombucha.

If you're interested in starting a kombucha culture and don't have a friend with some SCOBY to share, here's a site that can help you get started.  http://www.kombucha.org/

The SCOBY is the "mother", the culture.  SCOBY is an acronym for symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast.  Again, here's the Wikipedia link.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCOBY.

It doesn't look so bad...  Here's mine, after 8 days.

Kombucha with scoby on top

I simply used a ladle to remove most of the liquid, filtered it through a coffee filter and put it into a new jug.  I hope to invest in a ceramic crock with a tap so I won't have to use a ladle to get my daily dose.  But for now, this is the method I have to use.

The dark jug will help keep my tea fresh

I put a small piece of my scoby and a little liquid aside for another friend who wants to try it.

To add liquid to my culture, I simple made a new batch of sweet tea the way I always do.  Once it was cool, I poured it into my kombucha vessle.  Here's what my finished kombucha tea looked like.

Kombucha tea is slightly sour and fizzy

I still had to time to let my cheese rest, so I decided to make some pickled eggs.  My banty hen Pebbles has been laying up a storm!  I have 15 eggs from her and I'm not ready to incubate them... so pickled eggs it is!

To make pickled eggs, you start my hard boiling your eggs.

Then you have to put pickling spices in vinegar.  I got my recipe from an old cookbook I have from 1955 "The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook" by Ruth Berolzheimer.  The recipe I'm using is on page 307.

Pickled eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon mixed spices
2 cups vinegar
12 - 16 eggs

Since Banty eggs are so much smaller, I added 6 large eggs from my Cochin chickens.

I used McCormick pickling spices.  I boiled the eggs for 15 minutes.  Then I drained them and then covered them with cold water.  I left these to set for about 1/2 hour while I went back to my cheese.

By now, my curd had formed and was nice and firm.  The curd is adequately firm when you see it separating from the edge of the vessel and when a finger inserted makes a clean break.  It looks like this.

Curd "breaks" when touched

I broke the curds up, then let is rest for 10 minutes.  While it was resting, I cracked my eggs and put them into the jars with vinegar and spices.  Here's the finished product.

Eggs in vinegar and spices

Now the jars go in the fridge for 7 - 10 days.  These eggs will keep for several months.  I could also heat the jars in a pressure cooker and seal them.  They'd stay good for several years that way.  But we eat our eggs much too quickly to bother with canning them.

Now, back to the cheese.  I gently stirred the curd and slowly raised the temperature to 96F.  I stirred it every 10 minutes or so.  The curd sinks to the bottom and the whey comes to the top.

Curd on the bottom, whey on the top

I lined a colander with cheese cloth and poured the curd into it.  The whey just filtered right through.  I want to make some bread using the whey, so I saved it.  Here's a picture of the curd draining.

And the whey collected at the bottom.

I transfered the curd to a fine mesh bag and hung it to drain.  I squeezed as much whey out as I could.

Curd draining

After it had drained for 45 minutes, I placed the entire bag into the brine solution.

Curd in brine

The brine is made from 1 1/4 pounds non-iodized salt (cheese salt) in 1/2 gallon cool water.  I also added 1 tsp calcium chloride and 2 1/2 teaspoons vinegar.  The cheese will remain in the brine for 12 hours.  It should be stored at 45 - 55F, and eaten within 10 days.

Now that I had my whey, I could start my bread.  The recipe I will be using comes from the New England Cheese Making Company brochure "Goat Cheese" on page 5.

Whey Bread

4 cups whey
2 tablespoons honey
4 tablespoons bacon fat or tallow
1 1/2 tablespoons dry yeast
4 - 6 cups white flour
1 tablespoon salt

The whey was already warm.  I heated the honey and bacon fat until it was warm (about body temperature).  I added the yeast.

Bacon fat, honey and yeast

I added this to the whey.  I then added enough white flour to make it the consistency of honey.

The dough, ready to set aside

I took my thin dough, covered it with a towel and placed it near our wood fire.  Later this afternoon, I'll add the 4 cups flour and salt, knead it for 10 minutes... and bake it following the same procedures I did earlier this week when I baked bread.

I'll post pictures of the bread as it's rising and when it done.  That will probably be tomorrow morning.

Update 3/4/13

Here's the picture of the bread after it came out of the oven.  It tastes as good as it looks!