I tried to make hard cheese from raw milk by a common recipe: heating milk to about 190 F, then adding vinegar to curdle. However, I faced three issues:
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Different recipes suggest 1/4 – 1/8 cup of vinegar for one gallon of milk, but in my case, the milk does not curdle with less than 1/2 cup for a gallon of milk.
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The cheese produced is very soft. When I try to squeeze the cheesecloth (even think and double layer), the cheese is coming out of the cheesecloth pores. Then, I cannot remove more water from the cheese to make hard cheese.
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When I separate the whey, it still contains cheese, and after heating the whey, it produces a lots of cheese (even more than the first step).
Is there anything wrong with my method?
The cheese produced is quite good, and I just cannot go further to make hard cheese. A possible source of problem can be the size of my curds in the milk suspension, which is smaller than those shown in the vidoes posted on the internet (not forming big lumps; but I have no idea what can be the reason.
Best Answer
Hard cheese usually uses rennet, and a mechanical cheese press to extract as much whey as possible, and usually a long aging (drying) time to make it hard.
I think there may be a discrepancy between the original poster's definition of "hard" cheese and what is generally known as hard cheese like Grana Padano, Cheddar, and others.
The process the OP is describing sounds like how one would make fresh paneer, and "hard" in this case might be more like the texture of "firm" tofu.