Is it normal to have a difference in curd yield from one cheddar recipe to another? I made a stirred curd cheddar over the weekend for the first time and I noticed fewer curds in the collander than my farmhouse cheddar recipe usually produces. I did use a different kind of milk. Usually I use a standard store bought homo, pasteurized, whole milk. This time I used non homo, pasteurized, organic whole milk. Could I expect a traditional cheddar recipe to have less yet?

hmm, as u said, type of milk controls many things. all of cheddars cheese should fall withing same range of moisture and fat content… all methods (farmhouse , stirred, traditional) will go with different techniques but close results

so , what’s happened with u, is that homo milk resist whey (moisture) draining “syneresis” so u ended up with more moisture cheese which result more crud volume ..

regards

cheddar 39% moisture, 30% fat in general

I thingk the key element is u used a diff milk. Depending on how it was process, probably means how much gets coagulated. Might be interesting to see how much ricotta one gets from dif wheys from dif milks produced. If u get mote ricotta then less was coagulated into curds.