For the Love of...: ...Cheese Making Pt. 4- Let's eat!

It's been two months, and last week we literally, cracked into our cheese and decided to sample it before we shared it with our dinner guests the following night...

We used a sharp paring knife to cut through the layers of wax and cut out a wedge for sampling.  The cheese was not as hard as we hoped it would be.  We think this is because we did not heat the curds long enough before extracting it from the whey.  The texture and flavour was quite pleasant and similar to that of a soft goat's cheese.  We were able to spread it over crackers topped with jam and use it in omelets. 

Since we did not suffer any symptoms of food poisoning we decided it passed the test and we served it the next day prior to dinner as an appetizer.  Our dinner guests devoured a significant amount of the cheese and so we concluded this experiment as a success. 

Currently, we have another wheel of cheese aging in our fridge, this time, we heated the curds for a longer period of time and at a higher temperature.  We hope this will make a harder cheese, but we'll have to wait and see.  We want to further experiment with different types of bacterial cultures to see if we can achieve varieties and flavours.  If anyone out there has any tips on this topic, please leave a comment below! Check out previous posts for more info on the cheese making process.