Mozzarella trial - # 1

First attempt at making Mozzarella, hmmm, not so successful. I think where I went wrong, is that I bought organic milk which probably came from far away. The formula did say to use local fresh milk. I didn't read it close enough before buying all my stuff, so I just bought a gallon of organic whole milk. (thinking - organic = better) It does in general, but it is better to find milk that comes from a local source that's fresh (apparently it forms a better curd)

This is how the curd was supposed to look...


This is how my curd looked...

So, yeah - not so great, and I think that was the problem to begin with. I wasn't really able to drain the whey off as well as I would have liked either. Next time I will use rubber gloves so that I can knead it better. It was too hot after heating it up as in the formula.

As you can see, it had a bit of a grainy texture, but it was supposed to be the consistency of taffy...


And, when I dropped it into the ice water, it did kind of flake away. So, definitely there was something wrong with my curd to begin with...


In the end, it resembled something like cheese, though considerably softer, and not the right consistency...


Oh well, tomorrow if I have time, maybe I'll give it a second try. But whenever I do try a second time, I'll let you know how it turns out.

*UPDATE* - The thing I made that resembled cheese did NOT taste like cheese and was pretty gross actually. I forgot to add the salt!!!! I think I'm going to write out very specific instructions step by step for myself next time - the formula was sort of confusing and jumpy.