Not sure if this is the place to post this, but here goes:
Traditional Feta – By Flip & Tiffy
Ingredients
1 Gallon Raw Goat’s Milk
1 packet of Mesophilic Culture
½ Teaspoon Liquid Rennet (with ¼ cup non-chlorinated room-temperature water)
5 tablespoons kosher salt
20 oz. Whey
Directions
* Slowly heat milk to 86 degrees, stir gently 5-10 mins to ensure milk is evenly heated.
* Remove from heat and add 1 packet of Mesophilic culture, use skimmer and make up and down motions to draw cultures down and evenly (do NOT break surface).
* Let stand for five minutes to rehydrate.
* Maintaining 86 degrees, let stand and ripen for one hour.
* During ripening dilute ½ teaspoon of liquid rennet in ¼ cup non-chlorinated water, stir for 20 seconds.
* Once milk is done ripening for one hour, add rennet solution to milk and stir with up and down motion for one minute (do NOT break surface).
* Let stand for 30 minutes, keeping 86 degree temperature.
* Check for clean break, if necessary let the milk sit for ten more minutes.
* If clean curd break occurs, cut curds to ¾ inch cubes and let stand for five minutes to firm up. (Vertical cut, horizontal cut and 45 degree cut; vertical and horizontal).
**(Other recipes call for thirty minutes of stirring gently after cutting the curd, I’ve found this to be counter-productive, I ladle curds almost instantly after the five minutes.)
* Ladle curds gently into butter-muslin lined in a colander, let drain for 5 minutes.
* Pick up the butter-muslin (filled with the feta-curds of course!) and slowly for ten minutes squeeze the excess whey from the curds. (Yes, this can perhaps be done other methods, but I’ve found this to be more “personal”).
* Afterwords fill a mold with the curds. Curds will be soft but will firm up enough to flip after ten minutes.
* Drain in colander for one hour, flipping the cheese in the mold every 15 minutes.
* “Knock” the cheese in the mold once in a while to ensure whey expelling.
* Once one hour of flipping and “knocking”, let drain at room temperature for 24 hours.
* Dress the cheese for about four hours in a mold/colander and apply three pounds of pressure.
* Once 24 hours of ripening has finished, produce your (refrigerated) whey-brine (20 oz of whey and five tablespoons of kosher salt.
* Age feta for a day and a half for semi-crumbly texture. Three days to produce a normal-crumbly feta texture.
After feta has aged keep in refrigerator for up to one week and of course , enjoy!