Plain Soft Goat Cheese
This is a nice, tangy cheese that tastes great on toasted bread!
- Heat 1/2 gallon pasteurized goat's milk to 76F.
- Stir in 1/8 teaspoon Flora Danica starter (a mesophilic type culture that adds a buttery taste to soft cheeses).
- Add 1 tablespoon diluted rennet (1 drop diluted in 5 tbs unchlorinated H2O) and stir. (I use vegetable rennet).
- Cover and let sit for 12-18 hours (the room temperature should be about 70F).
- Scoop the curds into a goat-cheese mold (a plastic woven basket that lets the whey drain freely) and leave the mold to drain for 2-3 days.
- Remove the cheese from the mold and lightly salt.
The 2nd variety is an herbed goat cheese. Use the same recipe/process as for the plain cheese, but when scooping the curds into the cheese mold (Step 5 above), sprinkle in layers of the herb (or herbs) of your choice. I used an Herbs de Provence blend, which turned out to complement the tangy goat flavor really well.
Saint Maure
The final variety is called Saint Maure, which is a soft, mold-ripened goat cheese. (My very first moldy cheese!!!!) For this I made a wheel of the plain (unherbed, but salted) goat cheese as described above, then sprayed all surfaces of the wheel with a light mist of a Penicillium Candidum suspension. PC is a white mold that, theoretically, is supposed to grow on the surface of the cheese to give it a white, bloomy rind. To make the suspension, I used 1/8 tsp of PC mold powder suspended in 1 quart of tap water with 1/4 tsp salt. Then shake it up and let the powder rehydrate for 12-18 hours in the refrigerator. (The suspension can keep for up to 60 days.) Now I just have to let the cheese age for 2 weeks at 45F in my old college dorm fridge. The humidity should be around 95%, which is (again, theoretically) accomplished by placing an open pan of H2O in the fridge next to the cheese. Hopefully this will work.....
