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How To Make
Mozzarella
Cary Learns how to make mozzarella in a
Mozzarella-Making Class at Murray's
Cheese Shop!
When we talk about making our own pizza, what does
that mean?
For some people it may mean assembling a store-bought crust and store
bought ingredients, artfully arranging them and putting the assembly
into an oven for a while. Others make their own dough and buy
everything else. Still others want to control every step of the process.
We're
somewhere between the second and third group, and when the opportunity
came up for Cary to take a mozzarella-making class at Murray's Cheese Shop
in Greenwich Village, he jumped.
Murray's
is well-known
in New York City and has been offering cheesemaking classes
for some time. Their class offerings seem tailor-made for cosmopolitan
Manhattanites, featuring everything from Cheese History to
"Whey-cations" in popular Northeastern cheesemaking locales. We're not
really fans of exotic cheeses, but how to make mozzarella?
Mmm.
Just down the block from historic John's
of Bleecker St.
which is across the street from Keste
and around the corner from Joe's,
Murray's
is virtually surrounded by great New York pizzerias (and Cary couldn't
even get there without stopping for a delicious slice at Joe's).
Cary:
Arriving at Murray's
just in time, I walked through the crowded shop to the stairs at the
back. Their
clean, mood-lit classroom is on the second floor, overlooking the
bustling shop.
Tables
in the classroom were set up in a U-shape, with a place setting for
each student.
Baskets of bread were placed on each table. Glasses were set for water
and wine.
The
classes at Murray's
are not cheap, but the offerings make it worthwhile: cheese and
education, and if you're a wine-drinker (I'm not), you can easily
come out ahead on the deal. I didn't care. I
was there to learn how to make mozzarella.
So what did we learn?
Our
instructor shared some fascinating cheese history with us: what was
most interesting was that almost all major events in the history
of cheese can be capped with the phrase, "...and they ate it anyway!"
As in, "It was covered with some kind of blue mold... and they ate it
anyway!"
And then there's rennet... and they ate it anyway.
From history, we went to chemistry. Molecules meeting and making
mozzarella, whey protein and casein...
We
got to taste some ricotta and several forms of fresh mozzarella: fior
di latte (cow's
milk), bufala (from the milk of the water buffalo), the decadent
burrata (fresh mozz-balls with sweet cream inside), and smoked
mozzarella.
And
then, at last, to process. Milk > acidification
> rennet > salt.
Although we learned how curds are
formed, and we learned a source for microbial rennet (good for
vegetarians), our class focused on what to do once we HAD curds.
Pans were distributed, along with big stainless steel bowls and wooden
spoons.
We
each received a bunch of curds. Not much to them, I thought, tastes
like tofu. "Curds taste kind of like tofu" our instructor said.
We
each put our curds (which were cut into one-inch cubes) into the big
bowls, and poured warm water around them, "never pour the water
directly on top of the curds...", to warm the curds.
We let our curds sit in the warm water for a few minutes, until they
had lost their chill and became "softer and squidgier." Warming the
curds allows them to heat evenly when the hot water is added.
Then we drained the warm water and kept it aside. Time for
the hot water!
After pouring the hot water (really hot, like red-handed hot!) and
letting the curds sit in it and get soft, it was time to stretch, pull,
roll and push, making the little balls of fresh mozzarella.
Getting the texture right, especially with hands in hot water, was the
biggest challenge. Then rolling the cheese into
croissant-like rolls, folding them over, squeezing through thumb-and
forefinger to make the cheese balls.
I thought my cheese wasn't bad for a first attempt.
When I
brought some to Lillian, she agreed - for a first attempt.
The class was worthwhile, and one of these pizza-making days, we'll use
our own home-made cheese!
"Our own dough, our own mozzarella," he said, "soon I
guess we'll have to grow tomatoes and mill our own flour!"
Neither of which, by the way, is on our agenda.
Murray's
Cheese, 254
Bleecker Street, New York, NY www.murrayscheese.com
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Mozzarella
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Mozzarella
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