After making the Mozzarella you have to let it sit in cool water for a few hours and then refrigerate for a few hours more. After that the cheese has “set” and you can wrap in plastic and store in the fridge for 8-10 days. That’s about all for storing.
Now for the fun part, cooking with your homemade mozzarella. I recommend making pizza with your fresh cheese, especially if this is your first time making cheese (like me) and your cheese turned out a bit different from typical store bought motz. Here’s a fun Pesto Pizza Recipe for you cheese making folks out there.
Ingredients:
Dough - You can find fresh dough in the produce section of most groceries stores. I purchased mine from Food Lion.
Toppings – My go to are pepperoni, green pepper, and olives.
Pesto – homemade if you’ve got it.
Motz – homemade of-course
Parmesan- for topping
Olive Oil
Oregano - optional
Basil - optional
Make your boyfriend, husband, or significant other roll out the dough into pizza shape. We do a square because that’s the type of baking sheet we have. Place rolled out dough on greased baking sheet. Top with pesto followed by your toppings (sliced how you like) followed by your homemade mozzarella cheese and topped with Parmesan. Add spices if you’d like. Then bake as directed on the dough packet. Fin-ite.
And now a narrative:
Adam and I made delicious-o pizza and devoured half of it before I remembered to take pictures. I jumped straight out of my seat, fresh salad greens from my CSA, carrots, green peppers, and olives flew everywhere. Lola cleaned up what fell to the floor thanking Somerset Farms and her messy Mama for the veggies, as I occupied myself with these few photos.
With crisis averted, Adam and I sat back eating our pizza, washing it down with IPAs. It was good. The natural curiosity in ourselves and the excitement that flooded us as we ate homemade cheese (we didn’t think it was possible) made our conversation naturally turn to the cheese making process.
We started to pick apart what cheese really was, an odd reaction like making yeast bread combined with a simple ingredient, in this case milk to create a marvelous thing that melts when heated. Is that all?
Our Make Cheese Kit gave us the power to make cheese. A little teaspoon of this, a little teaspoon of that and poof. But what are those little spoons filled with?
As a child I was told cheese was made from mold. I imagined little spores growing like mushrooms expanding and expanding until at a specific point in time a mouse tiptoed over to this mass of mold, took a little nibble and squeaked out “Presto, it is cheese!” But while I was making my cheese, delicious as it is (and I tasted it in every bite as I ate my pizza), I didn’t have to make mold, grow mold or add mold. Instead, I added citric acid and rennet.
I knew what citric acid was, a simple chemical compound added to things to create a reaction. But this rennet thing, could this be the mold?
“Adam, do you know?” “Noooo” and he shook his head.
“Siri, do you know?” And of-course she did, “Rennet is a complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach. . .”
Siri’s computerized voice was interrupted as my pizza almost catapulted out of my mouth. My teeth caged it in.
“Repeat that Siri.”Adam instructed. “Rennet is a complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach, and is often used in the production of cheese.”
I slowly finished chewing my mouthful of mammalian stomach enzymes finishing with a swallow difficult to gulp down. As Siri kept talking, I imagined rennet being siphoned from the stomach of a baby cow. “Natural Calf rennet is extracted from the inner mucosa of the fourth stomach chamber of slaughtered young, unweaned calves.” I felt myself exported in time. I was once again a freshman on ASU's campus, averting my eyes away from the public speech area where activists stood with animal cruelty pamphlets. Look with your eyes. Could it be true “slaughtered young, unweaned calves”? Is this really what cheese is made of? I felt as if I was just told that Santa Clause wasn’t real. I had believed for the longest time. I was almost in high school before accepting the truth behind all the deception.
Rennet is created in the stomach of young mammals to break down milk. I thought of breast feeding babies, their tiny stomachs breaking down mama’s milk. How did someone even think of this?
I took another bite of my pizza, the mozzarella hot, the pesto garlicy, the pepperoni spicy and me freshly educated in the makings of cheese, from the birth of the rennet to the digestion of the result. Profoundly educated, I’d say. But I’d also say, some things never change.
I will always be naïve.
We are too far removed from our food.
And I will always eat cheese.
Thanks to Wiki for the info about Rennet.They need money, help donate.
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