Homemade Saint Maure Cheese

 

Sainte-Maure de touraine 04.jpg

 

Making Saint Maure is trying something really fun, getting moldy. Once you try this moldy Chevre, you may never go back to plain Chevre again. You will need molds like in plastic containers with holes in the bottom, to make this cheese.

 

Ingredients:

 

  • 1/2 gallon of fresh goat milk or raw, unpasteurized goat milk
  • 1 oz. mesophilic culture
  • liquid rennet
  • 1/8 tsp. of white mold powder (Penicillium Candidum).

Special supplies:

  • 5 Chevre molds
  • draining mats

*Remember to sterilize all your equipment before you begin.

 

Directions:

 

  • In a stainless steel pot, warm the milk to 72°.
  • Add the culture, white mold powder and stir well. Now you need to add 1/5 of a drop of rennet. Or measure out 5 Tablespoons of water into a small cup. Add to the water 1 drop of liquid rennet and stir well. Now measure out 1 Tablespoon of the rennet dilution (this one Tablespoon contains 1/5 of a drop of rennet) and add it to the milk. Stir well.
  • Cover the milk and place the pot somewhere that it can sit undisturbed and will stay about 72° for about 18 hours. But, you can let it go for 24 hours. What you do is place the pot in the cold oven until the next day.
  • When the milk has coagulated, you are ready to mold the cheese.

 

To make moldy cheeses:

 

Pour off any whey that has separated from the curd. Place your molds on a rack over a large baking pan. A lot of whey will drain from your cheese, and you will need a large pan to catch it. Carefully ladle the curds into the molds. Let the curds drain for two days at room temperature.

 

After the cheese has drained you can carefully unmold them into your hand. Sprinkle all the sides of the cheese with a little Kosher salt. When you unmold the cheeses, they may already have started to develop their fuzz.

 

For this aging, you will need some draining mats. For smaller weave in the mat, you can use a plastic craft “canvas” and it is available at Wal-Mart. If you want a larger hole in your drying rack, use “egg crate”. It comes in a large sheet intended for use in suspended ceilings and is available at home improvement stores. You can use these two “mats” separately and in combination to dry and age cheeses.

 

To age your Chevre, place them on a drying mat cut smaller than a large gallon size ziplock freezer bag. Slip the mat with the cheeses into a gallon ziplock bag, blow up the bag and seal it. Now you have a little aging “cave”. Let the cheeses age on the counter for a few more days and then move them into your cheese aging fridge. Here they continue to fuzz up for a few weeks. You can eat your little fuzzies at any time, but try to let them age a couple weeks to develop a good covering of mold.

 

 

Additional Cheese Recipes, click the link to view the details.

 

 

Related topic for you;

 

Image result for Mexican Queso Fresco

Queso Fresco

 

Meyenberg Goat Milk Products Valley Goat Cheddar – Aged, 8-Ounce Packages (Pack of 5)