Wednesday, March 9, 2011

The woes of Hot Summer day, Sourdough and Cheese making.

I had renewed confidence, my spirit of you can do it back in tact, I set out to make cheese, some times daily, if we had milked our goats and our friends goats. We got to keep all the milk we milked so some days had as much as three to four gallons, which is the amount I would need to make a good batch of cheese. One morning on a hot sunny day, Yogie, Booboo and I mixed up a batch of sourdough sponge to start our weekly baking day, and since I would be doing that in the kitchen, I decided to make a batch of cheese, to sort of kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I couldn't help in the garden or carve so this would be an efficient way to use our time.

I sterilized all the cheese equipment, a very important part of making cheese, and began the process. Things were rolling along fine, my sponge had risen and dropped, my cheese was in it's ball of curd in no time. I had time to walk in the rain forest with the girls before the next steps needed to be done. The rain forest is the name of the little grove of trees the girls and I walk in, there and back is approximately a mile walk from our house. They called it that because they have watch Dora since they were little and that is what she calls the forest she lives in. They are now old enough to know it isn't a rain forest, but to us it is a special place to share memories of our first walks, we started when Yogie was 3 1/2 and Booboo 2 1/2. They proved to be good walkers from a young age, we walked and collected flowers that we used to make decoupage gifts for Christmas. We called the flowers little rays of sunshine from God. I digress, as usual, so on with the task at hand.

We returned and mixed up the bread dough to rise. We cut the curd ball and to our amazement it had a bunch of perfectly round hole in it. We knew this wasn't right but didn't know why. Normal curd balls can have holes but they are odd shapes, the way the curd would naturally piece together. We decide to just go on with the cheese.  We dropped it in our heated whey and it wouldn't stretch right but finally got it to form into little balls. The balls also had little round holes in it. We went on line to try and find out what the problem was and we found that we had a contaminant. It could be something dirty, but we had carefully sterilized, or it could be a yeast contaminant. We realized in that moment, it probably wasn't a good idea to make cheese making day and bread making day the same day, especially on a nice warm day when yeast can bloom so well in a nice yeasty kitchen. We shared our cheese, as usual,  with Son, as he, Boy and Cubbie, they like to eat the balls from the jar together at night. Mokie doesn't like cheese and has chrone's so needs to be careful with her diet. We did explain why it had the little holes in it. We have since accidentally got the holes again but it is usually when my kitchen has had allot of yeast in it, so we try to coordinate the processes a little better but think we have it figured out for no future problems, but then the hot summer has not yet arrived again.

I have animals to feed, a lamb to lamb sit, a set of twin baby goats that momma is have a little medical issue with so have to help her feed one of them, though she is a wonderfully attentive momma, so you have a good day....... talk to you tomorrow.

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