Last week BJ watched a TV segment of 'Diners, Drive-ins and Dives' about an Italian pizzeria which makes all of its mozzarella cheese from scratch daily. Hmmm! I've made buttermilk, and yogurt from scratch, but I didn't know mozzarella could be made so quickly. That's something to investigate.
A quick search of the internet revealed that it is no more difficult than any of the other cultured milk products I had made, but it does require rennet and citric acid, neither of which I had in the house, or nor could I buy them locally. Bruce ordered them online.They came in yesterday. ( We now have enough rennet tablets to last us a lifetime. Fortunately they should keep well in their sealed foil pouches)..
The next challenge was finding a source for raw or lightly pasteurized milk. That is not as easy as one would think. In today's germaphobic world, most major brands of milk are ultra-pasteurized ( even some that are not labeled as ultra pasteurized are). We finally located one grocery store (Lowes) that carries milk from a local dairy that is not homogenized and is only lightly pasteurized.
So today we made some mozzarella cheese from scratch using a standard recipe from the rennet package. It is not difficult, and only takes about two hours start to finish. The only catch is that you have to repeatedly heat the milk curd to specific temperatures to draw out the whey. Get it too hot and you cook the curd and kill that batch of cheese. If it is not heated enough, the curd doesn't develop. Since our ceramic top stove tends to overheat things, I was forced to stand with a thermometer in hand monitoring the pot for the whole two hours to make sure the curd stayed at just the right temperature.
Our reward was 14 oz of the freshest mozzarella cheese we have ever eaten.
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