Homemade mozzarella

It would never have occurred to me to make mozzarella from scratch until Alice & I both read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this summer. It was an interesting book, and got us thinking even more about eating seasonally and locally, including canning our own produce.

One of the striking things in the book was how casually they make cheese. They even gave a website to order cheesemaking supplies from, so we went ahead and ordered a kit for $25. It comes with citric acid, rennet tablets, salt, a thermometer, cheesecloth, and instructions. The only part of this that's actually hard to find separately is the vegetable rennet, which comes in 10 tablets, enough to turn 40 gallons of milk into mozzarella. We will order this separately in the future if we run out.

The recipes are available online here and here for mozzarella. I think we've tried it a total of six times now, with 4 successes and 2 failures. The failures we attribute to excessively pasteurized milk, and we have been keeping a list of brands that work and brands that don't (Trader Joe's and Farmland have been good, Shoprite and Borden's have not). When it works, it really takes about half an hour to turn a gallon of whole milk into about ¾ pound of cheese. The process can be summarized as curdling the milk with citric acid and rennet, then squeezing out the whey while heating it up until it is firm enough to knead. We've made ricotta twice, too, which is even easier, you just curdle milk with citric acid (which initially looks as disgusting as it sounds) and strain it through cheesecloth. The ricotta ends up drier than store-bought, but we think it may be more like the Italian style.

One trick with making mozzarella is knowing when to add the salt. The first time, I added the salt to the milk initially, and I think it came out with the whey. I think the secret is to add the salt at the very last stage, when the whey is almost entirely out, but the consistency has not yet changed to the glossy, resilient final product.

It's fun to make and watch, and good, but not noticeably better than other fresh mozzarella. As for the locavore credibility, I'm not sure it save you much having the milk transported in gallon form from the dairy, instead of being transported as much more compact cheese. If you're comparing local milk with imported mozzarella, sure, you are eating a more local product if you make it yourself, but if the sources are comparably distant, my guess is that you would have a lower impact buying it as cheese.