Fresh Mozzarella
After reading this NY Times article about the clash between health inspectors and the old school makers of fresh mozzarella, I started to wonder how much effort it’d take to actually make this cheese at home, especially given the claims that freshly made mozzarella is worlds apart from stuff that’s been in the fridge for a few days.
Quick, naive googling got me this Food Network recipe which takes mozzarella curd and mixes it with simmering water to make a pullable cheese. I’m not sure if this makes some sort of stringy Polly-O crap or the nicely textured fresh mozzarella balls I’m familar with, though. But this search led me to google for mozzarella curd as the necessary first step, and I found a few souces, including this Amazon link to a 20-lb hunk of, uh, Polly-O curd.
The Amazon hit made me think of trying A9 out. The useful hit from here actually came from the accompanying image search results off to the side, which looked like some guy stirring a big pot of milk. Making cheese from milk? Yes: from a professor in biology and chemistry down in Cincinnati, in fact, has a recipe for fresh mozzarella from scratch. Basically, you need milk, cultured buttermilk, salt and rennet. I also found a quick-and-dirty method (well, I probably should use the word “dirty” next to food manufacture) on About.com that uses citric acid tablets to acidify the milk, instead of using cultured buttermilk. Similarly for a one-hour process. Just search for “gallon milk mozzarella”.
Interestingly, I’m not sure how well this cheese works for the lactose intolerant, especially in the versions that use citric acid to provide acidity. I’m not sure if cultured buttermilk provides lactobacillus to deal with lactose.
I might give this a whirl sometime in the future. I think it yields just under a pound of cheese.