Stilton Style Cheese

This is the Stilton style cheese made on March 30. It is about 7 days old in this picture. The mold is starting to grow as can be seen in the lower shots. Doesn't it look nice and fury?

Stilton Style Cheese

Here are the Stilton Style cheeses I made three weeks ago at a few days old. Over the next few days, I will post them in the various stages until we reach the current stage.

I ended up making two cheeses from that batch. The post from 4/9 shows the procedure of the lower cheese. Because of too few colanders to drain all the curds at ones, I had to split the curds and ended up with two different cheeses. The cheese at the top is dryer, the curds were cooked slightly and is not really a Stilton. I will go through my notes and describe the differences in another post.

The piece of cloth hanging in a tray of water to the left keeps the humidity at the right level.

Stilton Style Cheese

A week ago I made another attempt to make a stilton style cheese. I didn't cut the curd but ladled it directly in a colander lined with cheesecloth to drain. I let this drain for almost 24 hours. The curd was pretty dry. I cut the curd into cubes and let them air dry for a while before I milled them with salt and placed them in the mold.

ladling the curd

draining the curd

the drained curd

cut

milled

Stilton style result

A few weeks ago I cut the Stilton I made on April 29. I had changed the recipe a little because the cheese I had made previously from the same recipe turned out to dry. This has resulted in a white Stilton. There was no air in the cheese even though I poked it so the Penicillium roqueforti did not develop. Here and there I can see the vague presence of the mold. Nevertheless, it is a very fresh tasting cheese, not as salty as a blue cheese can be but but certainly creamy and somewhere, you can taste a lingering blue.

2nd Stilton style

This is my second attempt at a Stilton style cheese. I made on April 29 after I realised that the first try had turned out to dry. This one looks much more promising, the rind has developed beautifully. Although I can't wait to see and try the inside, I will give it another month or so.

1st Stilton style

Remember this?

Well, it turned is this, a deliciously tasting Stilton style cheese. It has the typical Stilton flavor, if a little to dry. I made this early April which makes it almost three months old.

Cracked Stilton

The Stilton I made a month ago has started to crack a little. It has been in a refrigerator which are notoriously dry. It has been around 7C/45 F with a humidity of 80%. After needling it to feed the mold with air, I wrapped the cheese in wax paper, hoping it will prevent it from drying out any further.

Stilton style result

Well, here it is, the cheese after five days. Pretty moldy already, I think the cheese has to much air in it. The curd was probably to dry when I put it in the form. I should have pressed it a little. If the mold keeps growing at this rate than it will soon be a big green glob.

Stilton style cheese

This is an attempt to make a Stilton type cheese. The recipe I used, came from Ricki Carroll's book "Home cheese making, recipes for 75 homemade cheeses".
The milk (3 gallon) is raw cows, bought clandestine on a farm in upstate New York. I used Flora Danica, (mesophilic) as a starter, and Penicillium Roqueforti as a mold. This sat for 30 minutes in the milk at 30C (86F). I then added the (animal) rennet, determined the flocculation time to be 16 minutes, multiplied this by 4 and let it coagulate for 64 minutes. Then I scooped the curd in a colander lined with cheesecloth. The curd sat for 9o minutes in the whey after which I tied the cheesecloth into a bag and let it drain for 30 minutes or until it stopped dripping. Next the bag was placed on a board and pressed overnight with about 10 pounds of weight on top. Ambient temperature was about 68F.
The next morning I broke the curd into 1 inch pieces and salted them in a clean bowl. Finally the curd was scooped into a 6 inch open end form, sitting on a cheese board with a draining mat on top. The from was turned over every 15 minutes for the first two hours and twice a day for the next 4 days. No mold has started growing as of yet, but I will post a picture when things start to get excited.