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| Photo of Gammelost from www.h-a.no |
In the June, 2013 issue of our Moosletter, we posted a request by one of our customers for a Gammelost recipe. Gammelost is a Norwegian cheese, rarely found in stores outside Norway. It’s a hard cheese with a mold ripened rind.
We heard from several readers about this cheese. One pointed us to an interesting blog article about it. Another offered to translate her Norwegian recipe (which we will post, of course).
Honey-Lee Pratt from Bath, Ontario found a recipe in one of her books and summarized it for us (below). We haven’t tried it yet, and, in fact, neither has Honey-Lee. So, if you do get a chance to make this cheese, let us know how it went.
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| Photo from www.food.com |
Gammelost
From – 200 Easy Homemade Cheese Recipes by Debra Amrein-Boyes
16 qts. skim milk
1/2 tsp. thermophilic culture
1/8 tsp. penicillium roqueforti mould powder
pinch of cylindrocarpon spp. mould powder
1 tsp. cheese salt
1. Sterilize all equipment. Pour milk into large stainless steel pot & let come to room temperature.
2. Sprinkle culture over surface & let stand for about 5 min. Using skimmer & up-and-down motion, gently draw culture down into milk without breaking surface of milk. Cover & let stand at room temperature for 48 hours or until milk is very sour.
3. Set pot in a hot water bath over low heat & very slightly warm milk to 145F. Turn off heat & hold 30 minutes. The solids will separate from the whey & form a stringy mass. Using the skimmer, dip curd mass from pot & place in muslin-lined colander. Fold some of the cloth over the curd & press through the cloth to expel as much excess whey as possible. Let drain 6 to 7 hours.
4. Remove curd from cloth. Break up into pieces with your clean hands & pack into prepared cloth-lined mold. Let drain on rack in a draining container for 2 days at room temp.
5. Remove cheese from mold & break up again into 1 inch pieces. Place in a bowl & sprinkle with the 2 mould powders. Mix in salt. Pack once again into the cloth-lined mold.* Pull cloth up neatly around the curds & fold excess snugly over the top with as few wrinkles as possible. Put on the lid. Place mold in press or place a weight on top. Press at light pressure for 12 hours or overnight (doesn’t say how much weight).
6. Remove from press & unwrap. Dry on a rack at room temperature for 2 or 3 days, turning daily. The cheese should turn yellowish and exude a pungent, yeasty smell.
7. Place cheese on a mat in a ripening container. Ripen at 50F & 90% humidity for 3 weeks to 7 months. Mould will begin to grow on the surface. Turn cheese & rub mould down onto rind by hand 3 times weekly. After 2 weeks, pierce cheese with a knitting needle all the way through, vertically & horizontally in several places to encourage blue veining in the interior.
*Note: A tomme mold makes a cheese about 1 1/2 inches thick, a more traditional cylindrical cheese can be made using 2 smaller diameter molds such as camembert molds.
Yield – 1 2/3 lb
