So i've taken it on me to make fresh mozzarella. I've read up on the task in some articles and with multiple recipes but for some reason I never succeed. The seperated curds always stay little crumbs and never take up the shape of solid blocks/curds/strands.
This is the recipe i'm following:
I use 1L pasteurized organic non-skimmed milk. It's non-homogenized milk but I don't know the pasteurisation temperature. I've used different brands. I dissolve a teaspoon of citric acid into 5 tablespoons of water. Adding this to the milk brings the pH to around 5.8. I've measured the amount of citric acid necessary to lower the pH of the milk to this acidity.
I then heat the milk to 30C. (i've also tried adding the citric acid to the milk at 30C instead of from the start). Once it has reached 30 degrees I take the pan off the stove, add 10 drops of microbiological rennet. The rennet is around 200 IMCU. Stir for 30 seconds.
Put the lid on, wait for 5 minutes.
Drain with strainer.
Result: poor crumbly curds, some even so fine they slip through the strainer. Cutting the curds is something i can't even think about.
Any mozzarella specialists here who could help out with this one? I don't want to give up on this endeavour but not sure if I want to keep wasting all this milk.
Best Answer
The problem is the organic milk. Or rather, the fact that organic milk available in grocery stores is high-temperature pasteurized, rather than conventionally pasteurized. That helps it keep a lot longer, but it disrupts the proteins so that they don't coagulate well enough for cheese.
I'm told that there are brands of conventionally-pasteurized organic milk, but I've never seen one. You might try it with plain old grocery store milk, and it should work. Or you could try to find a local producer, who won't use HTST pasteurization. (You might even be able to find unpasteurized milk, though the USDA definitely frowns on that: even though you're cooking it you won't have aged the cheese long enough.)