To Boldly Mold

Having spent last weekend learning the rudiments of cheese-making at the feet of the master, yesterday I decided that -  before all my recently-received wisdom dripped from my memory like whey from a newly-pressed Tome de Laguiole - I'd better get cracking on some camembert creation of my own.

My project took the better part of two days and caused the sort of uproar that can generally be expected from a new endeavour. The first time I vacuumed a jar of jam, you may recall, it took the better part of a morning, although now I can whip up a batch of preserves in the time it takes to heat up the oven for roast chicken. I trust my cheese-making, too, will become more efficient with practice, since at one low point yesterday afternoon I had draining trays, cheesecloths, bowls of whey, and all manner of related paraphernalia scattered about three different rooms of the house. My kitchen floor became horrifying sticky and my clothing took on the slightly sour aroma of a dairy. The Boys wisely made themselves scarce for much of the time, although Sir valiantly emerged at key moments to help with scullery duties and heavy lifting.

The result? Four positively respectable-looking cheeses sitting on the dining room table, waiting for their final salting. Dare I say it? So far, so good.

Here's what I did:

I first assembled my bugs, molds, and rennet. You will recall that camembert needs a dose of mesophilic culture as well as two different penicillin variations and I had earlier obtained these from the Cheese Queen. Note my ingredients' arrangement on a Dean and Deluca cheese board: I am hopeful that in about five weeks this lovely piece of wood will be adorned with my own fromage and chutney.

I organized my setup. I found I could easily create the sort of water bath I needed by using my canner and jam pan - the sort of awesome equipmental multi-tasking that would make Alton Brown proud. I poured in two gallons of raw milk from my local Jersey herd and plopped my candy thermometer in. I raised the temperature to 90 deg F (this took fifty minutes) and allowed the mixture to ripen for just over half an hour.

I added the rennet, gave it a bit of an up-and-down stir, and checked for flocculation after fifteen minutes. It wasn't quite ready, so I checked again every so often or so until - hey presto - I reached the soft-ball stage at Minute Number Twenty-Six.

The quick calculation C=5F (Total coagulation minutes = 5 x flocculation minutes) told me I had 104 minutes left to wait before the cutting the curds. I therefore busied myself with an ultimately-disastrous gluten-free baking project, reportage of which is to follow.

At the appointed time, I checked to see that the coagulated milk was starting to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Seeing that it had, I checked the cut, which dutifully did its thing. Satisfied, I pulled my longest carving knife from the block and made like a samurai - slash slash slash into the helpless curds! They too, shrank before my assault (which was probably more aggressive than it needed to be, strictly speaking - but g/f cake-production almost always puts me in foul mood).

I cheered considerably when I saw that the curds were behaving themselves and stirred them for a few minutes while I assembled my molds and draining apparatus.

Calmly, slowly and methodically I followed my guru's example and filled up each of the molds a little at a time. My angst disappeared as if my magic! I was additionally heartened by the fact that my yield seemed to be adequate - I filled all four molds right to the tippy top. Some spludged out the bottom of the first one because I neglected to hold it down sternly with my free hand. Lesson learned!

The whey started to seep from the wee mold-holes almost immediately - tears of joy, I think.

I allowed the cheeses to sit undisturbed for two hours, then gave them their first flip.

This was my first truly problematic cheese-procedure of the day, as I did not have cheese boards or the sorts of draining mats championed by the meister. I made due with a large flat plate, a small plastic cutting board, and sushi mats. The resulting kerfuffle required an SOS to Sir for some extra hands. We got the things flipped and drained (I think this is the point in time where the floor became sticky), but all the cheeses' tops sheered off neatly when they stuck to the mats. I poked them back onto the creamy surfaces like little berets, hoped for the best, and decided to carry out my subsequent flipping at sixty-minute intervals. It got easier as time went on: the cheeses became firmer and more obedient and by the third flip their chapeaux no longer needed re-adjusting.

The changes the cheese underwent were swift and dramatic:

• initial height after [M]olding: 4.500 inches
• height at first flip (M + 2.0 hours): 3.750 inches
• height at second flip (M + 3.0 hours): 2.750 inches. Two of the cheeses looked good at this point, one tore a little bit requiring an emergency touch-up, and one turned 90 degrees, somehow, so that it looked inside-out. This catastrophe somehow rectified itself during subsequent manipulations.
• height at third flip (M + 4.0 hours): 2.250 inches high. At this point, I realized the baking racks on which the cheeses were draining had a definite sag in the middle, causing the cheese to list at about 45 degrees. I changed to more robust racks and hoped gravity would do the rest (it did). The dining room (where the camemberts were draining) started to take on a distinctly tangy aroma.
• height at fourth flip: (M + 5.0 hours): 1.8750 inches high. All the cheeses were looking pretty good at this point! The bits that fell off tasted very lemony.
• height at fifth flip: (M + 6.5 hours): 1.75 inches.

Exhausted from my labors, I retired for the night.

This morning, I rushed downstairs to see how my babies were doing. When I lifted the cheesecloth and peered down into one of the molds, an amazing sight greeted my bleary eyes.

It looked like a cheese!

The cheeses measured 1.50 inches high after their slumber, which was exactly the height they were supposed to be. They were ready for their first salting! Carefully, I removed them from their molds, sprinkled 0.50 teaspoons of salt on the top surfaces, flipped 'em, and repeated on the other side. I treated the cheeses to clean racks and drip pans and took advantage of a fine photo opportunity before returning them to their molds.

Tonight, I will salt them one more time. Tomorrow morning I will remove their rings and let them expose themselves to the air until their surfaces are utterly dry. By tomorrow night, I hope to have them tucked up snugly in their cave (more details to come) so they can grow their fur coats.

Just like I always say: Out with the old mold, in with the new!