Feta - first try

The day after Christmas, excited by my new supplies and recipe book that I got as presents, I decided to try making the fresh greek cheese Feta. My new recipe book gave much more detail than the internet recipes I have used so far, so I was very confident.
Because my store bought goats milk was ultra pasturized, I decided to do a mixture of goat milk and cows milk. The recipe said you could use either. I also chose full fat milk, hoping it would somehow be more effective. The recipe book said to add calcium carbonate diluted in 1/4 cup of milk to any milk that was pasturized so I did this first.

Next I added the Mesophilic starter as directed and eventually 1/2 a rennet tablet dissolved in 1/4 cup of water. I will also add that in all cases, I used filtered water as the cook book said that chlorinated water would kill the good bacteria that is in cheese.

I was happy to see improvement in the setting of the cheese. This time it did start to become thicker as expected, but after an hour and a half of keeping the contents at the prescribed temperature, it still hadn't reached the clean break stage where when you cut across the curds, the cut remains and doesn't reseal itself. Eventually, I was tired of waiting and did my "cutting of the curds" even though they seemed a bit too soft.

At that point, the curds and whey are supposed to separate even more and the curds should be in a 1/2 inch dice. My dice was a bit big because I am still not very skilled at this step. Then the next hour was spent slowing raising the temperature to 100 degrees and keeping it at that temperature for about an hour, stirring often.

Again, all seemed to be going well except my curds seemed a bit soft.

Eventually the curds get drained in a cheese-cloth lined colander and allowed to drain for 1 hour. At the end of the hour, you cut it into blocks , drain another 1/2 hour while you sprinkle it with a little cheese salt, and while it is sitting you also mix cheese salt with water to make a brine. The cheese is then packed into containers and surrounded by the brine.

At this point I tasted the cheese and it did taste like Feta! Hurray!! However, it was still softer than the Feta I buy in the store and each day that I ate it (the next 4 days), it got softer and the brine got milkier as the cheese disintigrated.
Review: It tasted like Feta, but was too soft and didn't hold up in the brine. Not a total disaster, but still not what I wanted. It was fun eating it though.

Check out my next blog on Whey Ricotta. It was a by-product of this Feta. The cook book explained how you can use the fresh whey that you drained off to make another cheese and this by-product was a bigger success.