What to do with five gallons of milk

Once in a while, despite my best efforts, milk piles up in the fridge.

Last week, here's what I did with this much cow juice.

First, I skimmed off the cream. I just use a soup ladle for this task.

Here's some of the resulting cream.

Then I measured two cups of the skimmed milk into a pot and scalded it as the first step toward making ice cream. I've gotten to the point where I don't bother using the ice-cream churn, and just use the freeze-and-mix method.

I make vanilla ice cream for Don, and peach ice cream for myself.

Each batch requires three cups of milk and five cups of cream (six cups of milk and ten cups of cream for two batches), so skimming the cream from all those gallons is going to good use.

The (unfrozen) vanilla is on the left, and peach is on the right. (This is another reason I love making peach purée; I use it for flavoring.) I put these batches in the freezer overnight, being sure to mix everything once an hour for the first four hours of freezing.

That used up all the cream. I was left with gallons of skimmed milk. Incidentally, home-skimmed milk isn't like the watery-blue stuff you buy in the store. It's a whole lot richer, almost (almost!) like store-bought whole milk.

I used this milk to make thirty-minute mozzarella. The recipe in my cheesemaking book calls for using one gallon of whole milk.

I experimented with making two-gallon batches using skimmed milk, and it turns out fine. Perfect for pizza, in fact. Plus, making two two-gallon batches is far more efficient than making four one-gallon batches.

By the time I skimmed the cream and took out the skimmed milk necessary to make the ice cream, what was left was almost exactly four gallons of skimmed milk. This is what I used to make the two batches of mozzarella.

This is the finished mozzarella.

Final weight of the cheese came to about 5.25 lbs.

I cut it up...

...and grated everything. With this much cheese to grate at the same time, you can see why I love this rotary cheese grater so much!

Ready to bag.

I portioned it out into one-pound bags and froze all but two bags.

I held back those two bags because I decided to make some pizza. I pulled the sauces out of the freezer to defrost. Don prefers tomato-based pizza sauce, but I use a homemade ricotta white sauce (remind me to post that recipe later).

Here are the uncooked pizzas topped with cheese...

...and then with pepperoni and onions. (Ahem. I love onions, so I tend to go a little crazy with them as toppings.)

The finished pizzas.

And that's what I do when I have five gallons of milk to use up.