I couldn’t stand that mozzarella eluded me. Not one to admit defeat, I tried making mozzarella one more time. Much better results!
A single ball of mozzarella – enough for a meal or two – can easily set you back $10 or $15NZ. The unhomogenised farmhouse milk I bought from our supermarket was expensive at $5 for a 2 litre bottle, makes about 250grams of mozzarella so worth the effort.
I’m no expert on mozzarella, but I believe failures and learning how to correct failures give you a better understanding of the process. Failures make you better at what you do. If you never fail at something, you might never know how to correct something if it one day all goes horribly wrong.
This time I used the recipe by Allison from Pease Pudding, combined with my previous research. I had to add 0.5ml of calcium chloride to Allison’s recipe as my curds refused to form even after half an hour.
My second attempt at making mozzarella
5 tips on making mozzarella:
- If your curds refuse to form, add 0.5ml calcium chloride (dissoved in 1/2 teaspoon of water). Though traditionalist will insist on waiting up to 10 hours for the curds to form! Curds should be like soft tofu and firm enough to cut with a sharp knife
- Citric acid makes mozzarella stretchy. Too much citric acid and the cheese will be too stretchy, not enough and it will snap.
- Keep your water at 70°C when stretching. The hot water will help the mozzarella form and become stretchy and smooth. I need to keep my water constantly hot to get a better texture. My mozzarella (pictured) is not as smooth as I want it to be.
- Add salt to the ice cold water to lightly salt the cheese
- Mozzarella di Bufala is the traditional mozzarella and made with milk from the water buffallo. Mozzarella fior di latte is made with cow’s milk
Bunny Eats Design 
Bravo! I think it is amazing that you made mozzarella! I have only ever made ricotta, the easiest cheese in the world to make.
I tried making it once and failed…might have to give it another go. I’m going to use this recipe, he’s got such great tips http://fromthebartolinikitchens.com/2012/10/10/the-long-wait-is-over-today-were-making-italian-mozzarella/
That recipe looks a lot harder than the one I used! I tend to pick the easiest instructions. Less chance of things going wrong. If it all goes terrible wrong, it takes a lot for me to try again.
Mum gave me a Mad Millie cheese making kit yesterday and I need to pull it out. It’s a soft cheese kit. Very impressed with your cheese making!
Do it Cass! Mad Millie is great! I have the fresh cheese kit.
Oh man! That’s awesome! Ive tried making mozza twice.. the first time it ended up as cream cheese, and the second time it was too hard to stretch. Yours is beautiful! You’ve inspired me to give it another go on my days off this week. Your pizza looks mentalll mmmmm
Hey, it sounds like you needed more citric acid in your last batch. Not sure what happened in the cream cheese batch though. I’ve yet to make cream cheese. Either on purpose or accidentally!
Can I ask you what you thought of the mozzarella. I made it once (I think using the same recipe as you). It was a bit of a failure on the texture side, but even worse, the cheese tasted like Milk.
Hi Mick, fresh mozzarella tastes like milk. It shouldn’t taste cheesy or sharp. It should be like stretchy, milk.