All cheeses undergo a process of acidification, either by the direct addition of an acid, as is done in this case, or by the action of lactic acid bacteria that consume lactose (the natural sugar found in milk) and produce lactic acid. Acidifying the milk for cheeseįirst, acidification. Of course, that’s not nearly enough to go on, so let’s break it down. If I were to answer the question of how mozzarella is made in one sentence it’d probably be this: Fresh mozzarella is made by acidifying milk and coagulating it with rennet, then kneading and pulling the resulting curds in a hot water bath. Here, we want the original, fresh mozzarella. While that blocky cheese is also made by flexing and plasticizing the curds, it just doesn’t have the same texture and fun as the fresh stuff. Nowadays most mozz is made with moo milk, and most mozz is low-moisture, which is to say it’s the brick mozzarella that you grate off of a block. In the States, that’s harder to come across-and even harder to make from scratch-but if you ever get the chance to try some, certainly take advantage of the opportunity. In Italy, mozzarella was originally made with the milk of an Italian breed of water buffalo ( mozzarella di bufala). Balkan Kashkaval is another pulled-curd cheese, as is real provolone.) Mexican queso de Oaxaca (locally called quesillo) is a very similar sister to fresh mozzarella but is rolled into what looks like a ball of string, with pieces unraveled and cut or torn off for use. (Mozzarella doesn’t have the corner on the market for this method, though. Curds are cooked and heated, then stretched together and pulled repeatedly to make a cheese that is fibrous and somewhat elastic. In English, we use the term stretched-curd or pulled-curd cheese, but the meaning is the same. It is the most well-known version of what the Italians call pasta filata, meaning spun paste. Mozzarella is an Italian cheese from the region surrounding Naples. And if you are seriously into cooking and you made your dough from scratch and you made your sauce from scratch and you grew your own basil, well, then making your own mozzarella seems like the next step, right? If you’ve ever wanted to wade safely into the world of cheese making-without investing in an aging system or a curd press-making fresh mozzarella is a fantastic path to take.Ĭheesemaking is intensely temperature-sensitive, so we’ll lay out the tools and temps you need to get it right as we follow the method published by Epicurious. It’s really quite good.īut, of course, it’s not readily available in every place. If you’ve ever had the delicious privilege of eating a properly-made Pizza Margherita or a garden-fresh Caprese salad, then you have known the joy that simple, fresh mozzarella cheese can bring.
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