Making Parmesan with Raw Milk – Curd Nerd

Making Parmesan with Raw Milk

lesley — Wed, 06 Aug 2014 07:52:20 +0000

I’d like to use our source of raw milk to make Parmesan but understand it is a low fat cheese – if I allow the cream to settle and remove as much as I can, will that reduce the fat level enough? Also, is it acceptable to not use lipase – as the raw milk should have reasonable levels of this enzyme?

Reply To: Making Parmesan with Raw Milk

Curd Nerd — Fri, 15 Aug 2014 23:14:05 +0000

It’s absolutely fine not to use lipase if you believe your milk has enough of it’s own. As you can imagine, traditionally made cheese never had additions of ingredients such as lipase added. They just worked with the milk and cultures they had, and their unique profiles and made certain cheeses accordingly.

Let your cream settled and then carefully spoon it off, getting as much of it as you can. This will reduce the fat content nicely and allow you to make your Parmesan.

Let us know how you go! : )

Reply To: Making Parmesan with Raw Milk

lesley — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 01:33:14 +0000

Well, it looks like parmesan – definitely much smaller curd size due to higher temperature scald, I guess. We’re leaving it until July next year, exercising great patience. The cheese is 880g from 8 litres of raw milk – not sure if this is an ok yield or if we maybe stirred a bit too much. I used the skimmed off cream to make a double batch of Blasphemous Ricotta, which was shared with friends on crostini, under caponata – delicious.

Reply To: Making Parmesan with Raw Milk

Curd Nerd — Sun, 17 Aug 2014 23:08:22 +0000

Oooo! That does sound delicious Lesley. I’ve only just finished my breakfast but I could eat that right now.

I work on a rough guide of getting 100grams of cheese for every litre of milk so your yield seems fine. You should definitely have a smaller curd with a Parmesan make so I would say you’re on your way to a good cheese : )

Now for the hardest part…waiting for the cut.