Sandor - 23 February 2009 05:11 PM
Hello to all,
I always make my cheeses only from raw milk. I think I am lucky I’ve found a farmer to buy from. I use only buttermilk and yogurt as culters. I pasteurize the milk for every kind of cheese at a temperature of 72 deg C.
My last cheese is a swiss one, a really micro-miniature one, made from 5 liters of milk. On Thursday it’s going to be aged in the refrigerator at 5 deg C, after 6 weeks at room temperature and regular washing with brine.
Finally I have a question: Nabil or anyone, I didn’t add propionic, should I expect any eyes in spite of pasteurizing the milk?
Alex
Dear Alex;
Yes propionic is there in the raw milk, think how swiss cheese is made 200 years ago?? or before? they did not have a pure propionic freezed fancy powder to be added.
but here there is very critical factor, propionic growth (even if it is from powder or raw) at maximum when pH is 6 and stopped when pH is 5
for this reason, the swiss cheese day one pH should not be fall beyond 5.2.
if cheese pH is 6 propionic will work so much and explode the cheese, if pH 5 propionic will not work, so in the ideal case swiss pH 5.2 -5.4 is a moderate and this will enable swiss to form eyes slowly.
By the way propionic job is not to produce eyes only (co2) the gas is only a left over , the other components which influence the flavor…
one another factor, one big eye is a result of merging of very very small eyes then it merged to each others to form one big every few centimeters, SO if u ever drain the whey and the pH is bellow 6.3 then the texture (lose of calcium phosphate) will leave ur cheese not flexible enough to allow this to happen and u will end up with very tiny and lots of small eyes.
conclusion, swiss cheese is easy and hard to do, u need to follow some critical pH steps and end up with final pH correctly, of course this is a result of how much lactose (whey) is removed during cooking….. think again