Dairy Day

I had a bunch of milk in the dairy fridge to use up, so I decided to make yesterday a Dairy Day and get things processed.

One of the things taking up room was this gallon of older cream. It's been hanging around for weeks, so of course it smelled sour. Oddly enough, sour cream makes some of the best butter, for which I had it earmarked.

Ah, but I had far more cream than just this one jug. I skimmed the (fresher) cream off the rest of the milk in the fridge. Some I used to make another batch of ice cream. Then I used the skim milk to make yogurt and mozzarella cheese. So at one point I had three pots on the stove: One (on the left) for mozzarella, one for yogurt (back right), and one for butter (heating the cream to 60F).

After the ice cream, the yogurt was finished first. I heated the milk to 180F, then let it cool to about 110F. It formed a skin on top, which must be removed.

Then I mix in the culture, which is simply a bit of yogurt I made previously and which I put aside for that purpose. (I use a Bulgarian starter culture that can be re-cultured indefinitely.) Then it was into the incubator for several hours.

This is the first batch of mozzarella, just out of the pot. Look at all that whey.

Here's all the butter I churned, still in its sloppy unwashed stage.

This is after it's washed.

It came out to almost exactly three pounds.

I'm not very scientific when it comes to freezing fresh butter. I just lay out plops of about half a pound each on sheets of waxed paper...

...then wrap them before putting the lot in a Ziploc bag and stashing them in the freezer.

This morning, I scooped some of the chilled fresh yogurt into small jars for future cultures.

Then I date the cultures. This way I can use the oldest ones first. I always keep at least three jars of culture on hand in case of mistakes (such as adding the culture to the milk before it's sufficiently cooled, which kills the culture).

This morning I also grated all the mozzarella, both the two batches I made yesterday (on the right) and another batch I made a few days ago (on the left) which has been sitting in the fridge.

I tell ya, this new rotary grater I got is worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

Here's all the mozzarella grated up.

I bagged it in one-pound increments. It came to about 6.75 lbs.

So my final tally for yesterday's Dairy Day is a gallon of ice cream, a half-gallon of yogurt, six+ pounds of mozzarella cheese, three pounds of butter ... and no waste except the whey. Not a bad haul.