I live in a place where finding citric acid is very hard.  I can get raw milk and rennet, but citric acid is close to impossible.  How do I translate the measurement of citric acid into lemon juice?

Hi and welcome to the forum…..
I can’t answer your question about lemon juice, but I would refer you to the following page. This gives a recipe for mozerella that does not use citric acid. It seems the only thing you would have to have access to is buttermilk as a starter. I have not tried this recipe but this guy has a good reputation among home cheese makers.
The address is: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Pasta_Filata/Pasta_Filata.html
You also might browse around this website. He has several different recipes posted and in fact there are three or four different ones for Mozzerella.
Hope this helps.
Dave

Thank you for the link to that site.  You might laugh, but buttermilk is not easily available here either.  I am in Latin America and even cheese is hard to get here.  I will start my search for buttermilk.  If nothing else I will try to make my own buttermilk without the use of a starter culture….  This making cheese here is proving challenging, but I’m not giving up.

Okay, that does present a bit of a problem…..
I do know that if you get some fresh cream (or whipping cream) you can put it in a jar and shake the heck out of it. After the butter seperates from the liquid you are left with buttermilk (the liquid part). The only problem with this approach is that it takes a lot of cream to make a small amount of buttermilk. The plus side is that not only do you get the buttermilk you need but you also get a nice amount of fresh butter to eat.
We used to make butter all the time although we did have an electric butter churn to do it with. I would always just dump the buttermilk down the drain since I honestly can’t stand the taste of the stuff.
I have made cheese using buttermilk as a starter (one batch of cottage cheese) and it did turn out well. It does work, it’s just a little more labor intensive.
By the way…..what type of milk are you using for your cheese? Are you going with fresh milk, or store bought? If fresh, you have a good ready source of the buttermilk you need. The only thing I’m not sure about is if fresh buttermilk is the same as cultured. If not, then it will not have the bacteria needed to act as a starter. Maybe someone else will come along who has a better knowledge of this subject.
I really hope this information helps you out. The joy of making your own cheese and trying to perfect the craft simply can’t be overstated.
Also, stay in touch with this board. There are many helpful people who are more than willing to help with whatever problem or question you might have. I’ve only been here for a short while but I can tell you that the cheese I make is a better quality because of what I’ve read and learned here.
If you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
Have a great evening.
Dave

One other thing….
I don’t know if this will work, but one of the members here….Neil, has used store bought cheese to act as his starter. He puts it in a blender and gives it a whirl and has a culture that will make the type of cheese that he is working on. I don’t know if this will work on Mozzerella, but hopefully he will chime in and let us know. I would expect that you would have at least a 24 hour ripening period with this method if not more, to get the proper acidity.
As I said, Neil is the expert with this method (and I’m pretty sure Nabil has done the same), so hopefully one of them will be along with some advice.
Dave

From what I have read its “1 tsp citric acid or 3/4 cup lemon juice” however depending on the season the lemon could have halve or double the PH value, so this is definetly a experiment, Try it u may like it
Did u try going to a Pharmacy to see if they have citric acid?
Thanks Likesspace for the nice comments, however I am no expert, I just learn from my mistakes, Most of the time

Thanks… I have tried all the pharmacies and the macrobiotic shops here.  No one has Citric Acid.  I have one last resource I am going to work on.  Thanks for the idea.

Hi and welcome.  Just a suggestion for acquiring your needed supplies.  I may be overlooking something, but you obviously have internet access, so why not just order online?  Surely you’ve thought of this, so there must be other hindrances; but if you have mail delivery you should be able to either a) order it yourself directly, or b) have a friend in another area get it for you and send it to you.  That’s how I got powdered milk when I lived in Micronesia.  Just my two centavos worth.