Important update! It’s been two weeks since my last cheese post – this took a little longer than I had originally planned. After one week with no discernible mold growth, I e-mailed Luke Dolby at cheeseandyogurtmaking.com, who graciously responded with some much needed advice. I dissolved a quarter teaspoon of the penicillium candidum into a quarter cup of boiled water and put it into a sterilized spray bottle. For the next week, I spritzed the cheeses every day when I flipped them. After five days the mold was prospering finely and at last I’m ready to wrap and store them – which means my indenturehood to this project is finally over.
That’s a fine looking cheese, if I do say so myself.
Full disclosure time: the other three are not so pretty. But perfection is boring right? So I’m just going to go with it. It’s my first try.
As a present to myself, I got a beautiful package of “Cheese Paper”, which is printed with little cows, sheep, and goats and comes with clever labels for storage. Allegedly this paper “…simulates the environment of a cheese cave” and is better than plastic wrap, which “suffocates” the cheese. Well I didn’t do all this damn work to have my little cheeses suffocate.
(I made the little cow say “Moo”.)
Into the fridge they go to live quietly for a month or two. Perhaps I’ll take one to Thanksgiving with the in-laws. Perhaps I’ll share with family and friends over a well-paired bottle of wine. Maybe they will start to smell like gasoline after a month and I will drop them into the neighbor’s garbage can in the dead of night. Anything can happen now, but at least I can say I tried.
I made cheese y’all!
illdothedisheslater 