As you may know already, Friday night at my place is cheese making night. It has become a regular institution, whereby Kim leaves the milk out on the kitchen bench for me and as soon as I get home, I start to set up and sterilise the equipment as she serves up dinner.
Tonight I am making a simple blue cheese using the recipe from Ricki Carroll’s Home Cheese Making book which uses 2 gallons or 8 litres of milk. It is easy to follow, and I am currently about 5 hours into the process with about an hour to run until it is time for bed.
Here is where I have got to so far.
Sushi mats on top and bottom of the moulds.
I used 14 litres of milk and adjusted the recipe to suit. I ended up with these two smaller cheeses which are in Camembert hoops.
I also had enough curd for this very large cheese. Now all I have to do is find a container large enough for it to fit in to keep it humid enough in the cheese fridge.
As they mature, I will show you what happens as the blue mould grows. This recipe is very quite similar to making Camembert, with the aftercare of Stilton. A bit of a hybrid cheese. After about 3 days of drying and salting, I pierce each one with many holes so that the bacteria can breath and make the blue mould. Then they go into the humid cheese fridge.
Thanks everyone, hope you are getting something out of the weekly updates about the blue cheese. Let me know if they are benificial and conducive to learning the entire process.
Gav
I am so glad you decided to include this on your blog. I have done several cheese from Ricki's book, and the blue cheese recipes seemed very intimidating to me. Will look forward to seeing how this turns out for you!
Thanks for the tutorial on blue cheese. I have Ricki's cheese book and will try the basic blue recipe then the stilton. While I'm waiting for my penicillum roqueforti to be delivered I'm doing my first muenster. This will be my first brined cheese. I'll let you know how that turns out.
I hope you have more luck than me with this same recipe. Mine developed blue mould initially but somewhere along the way the mould disappeared. I ended up throwing it out last weekend after about 4 months of hoping it would turn into something edible.
I am making blue cheese now too. It's been aging for about a month and is pretty fuzzy and blue. It looks frightening, but I hope it's on the right track!