vendredi 18 octobre 2013

Cheesemaking : first camembert ever

On september 29th I made camembert for the first time.



These is the visual I made following the instructions from David Asher's workshop
and also from his blog, see my previous post here)

&

Using 4 litters of pasteurized (sigh...) but non homogenized & local (yeah!) milk,
I managed to pour 2 camemberts.

That's all I could fit in my largest pot.

The curds seemed so perfect.

I used plastic containers that I pierced to strains the water out.

 I calculated the percentage of salt (3%) needed per weight of each camembert,
and I rubbed them all around after 24 hours of drainage.
(see bottom right corner of my visuals)

Yes, after the first night, I got 2 very puffy camemberts.

2 things might have happened,
  • one is that the heater in the house was on all day (hubby stayed home)
  • second is that I threw a kefir grain in the milk because I was afraid that my whey would be too weak to curd the whole thing.
I figured I didn't need to panic because of this puffiness. After all, maybe it would create small holes inside the camembert, just slightly more than usual.

As for the aging process, I did an experiment:

I aged one camembert in a glass container in the fridge.
I aged the second camembert in a plastic salad spinner (because of the inner straining basket allowing air to circulate all around the cheese) in my basement.

Day 10:
The basement camembert is developing some lovely white mould.
The fridge one doesn't look like a camembert yet.

Day 17:
The fridge camembert is showing first signs of wonderful white mould on the surface.
The basement camembert is getting very smelly (did I mentioned that our laundry area is in the basement?) so I transferred it into a sealed big stainless steel container.

Day 19:
I decide to have both camemberts inside the fridge. I saw that Aaron Estes from Cave-Aged Blog, would "wrapped them in foil, put them in a freezer bag, and placed them in the bottom drawer of (his) refrigerator". So I'm going to do the same thing, except I'm adding a sushi mat under the camembert for it to have a sort of breathable mattress.

I shall wait another 4 to 6 weeks. I will check on them every 2 or 3 days.


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