Accidental milk products

I purchased my first raw milk 1 month ago.  Since then I have been making yogurt using a yogurt culture.  One time I was out of culture and used some store bought yogurt for the starter.  It was a plain yogurt from Oikos.  It never set up properly after 20 hours so I thought I would pasteurize it and start over. Well, surprise, surprise, I got what seems to be mozzeralla.  It was stretchy and tastes great but what is it?  I had some surplus milk after heating to 110F for making yogurt so I put it in a jar in the fridge.  What resulted 2 weeks later was in 2 layers, one sour cream-like and one like feta cheese.  This is like magic happening in my kitchen and although I use these things regardless of what their names are I would like to understand more about what is happening.  I know I can google, but I want to hear personal stories.  Did I make mozzarella and feta?

Many things can be made, as you say, with raw milk.

Regarding your yogurt - if you do not use a guaranteed live culture yogurt as your starter it will not 'culture' for you.

For other official cheeses you need their proper culture and/or rennet, and/or sea water.  Even Feta cheese is made with rennet.  So no you didn't make true mozzarella, or true feta cheeses.  However, many similar tasting cheeses can be made by using simpler processes - including clabbering (allowing it to sit in a warm place until the whey separates out) - and/or fermenting it in one fashion or another - this is what I'd say you did with your yogurt-flop.  It was inoculated in some way and fermented into some interesting ferments - delicious I wish I was at your house!

Enjoy your ferments!

Thank you Jami. your reply was helpful.  I am operating with the belief that none of my milk products are going to kill me or make me terrbly ill.  Smell is sure subjective.  I have to think cheese to smell stuff properly, cuz, sure, by my old standards these things have gone sour and are "ruined".  But no, they have turned into something like cheese.  I put the sour cream/feta (clabber) cheese one on pizza and it was delicious.  The mozzarella-like one has been good on salads.  So cool!  This could so easily blossom into all out cheese making. 

Exactly 

As long as your source for raw milk is clean and mostly grass/hay fed I wouldn't worry about bad bacteria over producing and causing you problems.  The issues come in when the cows are raised the modern way, fed plenty of grain, kept in close confinement and other such practices which promote dangerous bacteria to live and grow inside the cow, even in it's meat.

Others will disagree with me, but I believe 'modern practices' in animal care and raising are the reasons why our foods today are not as safe and clean as in days gone by.

I never heat my milk, even when making cheese.  We consume, raw, organic, pasture fed milk for it's probiotics - which heating would kill.  Good gut flora is our goal.

So consider your source for raw milk and proceed accordingly    Blessings....

Can you elaborate Jami on the use of sea salt that you mentioned?  And where does one get cheese cultures, online or what?  And clarify one more thing.  Do you heat your milk at all for the yogurt culture to grow in?  I'm thinking that 110F is just enough to encourage the bacterial growth but not enough to destoy enzymes and the other beneficial constituents of raw milk (grass fed all year). 

Yes, sea water or water with sea salt + rennet are used in making mozzarella as seen here

Get your cultures here http://www.culturesforhealth.com/vegetable-rennet.html

Your correct about 110 F is not to high of temp, I believe the recipe called for 130 F for yogurt.  I now make Kefir yogurt, which doesn't require heating the milk at all.

When making cheeses, I heat the milk to just barely warm, add the culture, rennet, or even buttermilk, and then place in a barely warm oven over night.  Works great....

Thanks so much-I know where and how now.  Cheesemaking and kefir in my near future.

I keep milk goats and make yogart and various cheeses.  If you are out of raw milk to make yogart you will have to pasturize store milk before it will "yog".  You could however, work with powdered milk and boiled tap water.  I take my milk warn from the teat, put it in a sterilized jar with a Tbls. of starter and place it on top of the refrigerator.  In 8 hours it is yogart(more time in cold wx and less in hot).  I prefer buttermilk which I make the same way but with some cultured buttermilk as starter.  Many buttermilk and yogarts will not serve as starter cultures.....I dont know what is done by the processors to kill them, probably pasturizing after the culturing.
You can use buttermilk or yogart to inoculate raw milk to make low temperature cheeses, like mazzarella, colby etc..  Special cultures are only needed to make high temp cheese like swiss etc.
Use of rennet makes the result more reliable, and the curd firmer and faster.

Thanks Spirit, the store bought yogurt could also have been too old.  I don't know how long the microbes live on the store shelves and that is why I started making my own.  There was enough something in the one I used to partially set the yogurt and then to turn into something else when heated.  I believe you are saying that mozzarella and other young cheeses can be made without cultures.  I'll experiment again with heating yogurt and see what happens.  The link I looked at showed the mozzarella being worked a bit, kneaded sort of.

spiritrancho wrote:
Many buttermilk and yogarts will not serve as starter cultures.....I dont know what is done by the processors to kill them, probably pasturizing after the culturing.

Yes, that is just what they do. 

You can also find live cheeses, not heated after the culture was added, usually in the specialty cheese section - grate these up and add to your heated milk + rennet to make a light-heat version with flavor   

Right on Jami-concrete and doable now.

spiritrancho wrote:
take my milk warn from the teat, put it in a sterilized jar with a Tbls. of starter and place it on top of the refrigerator.  In 8 hours it is yogart(more time in cold wx and less in hot).  I prefer buttermilk which I make the same way but with some cultured buttermilk as starter.  Many buttermilk and yogarts will not serve as starter cultures.....

I make yogurt from raw cow's milk in a similar fashion.  I never heat it up.  Warm from the cow is best but I've use cold as well.  It just takes longer.  I use a small local commercially prepared yogurt that uses a Bulgarian culture.  I sell most of what I make, but make several jars of it for myself and then use that as the starter. 

pattimair wrote:
I am operating with the belief that none of my milk products are going to kill me or make me terrbly ill.  Smell is sure subjective.  I have to think cheese to smell stuff properly, cuz, sure, by my old standards these things have gone sour and are "ruined".  But no, they have turned into something like cheese.  I put the sour cream/feta (clabber) cheese one on pizza and it was delicious.  The mozzarella-like one has been good on salads.  So cool!  This could so easily blossom into all out cheese making. 

I work on a raw milk dairy and have made some accidental as well as purposeful projects.  I also used to brew beer.  I use the same guiding principle as you that most things that don't smell or taste awful won't kill me or make me terribly ill.  And it is subjective.  I also find that if I make it I probably push the sourness factor specifically with beer.  I have over heated my yogurt, which I make in an oven with the pilot light on and made some cheese type thing somewhere between cottage cheese and feta.  I am now fermenting some over cooked yogurt in a jar in the pantry just to see.  This is how most fermented foods were discovered to begin with.  Someone left something somewhere and ate it anyway. 

The main advantage to buying cultures, rennet, and starters is consistency.  The finished product is more predictable and controlled.  Depending on where you live if there is a homebrew and winemaking store they sometimes carry cheese supplies as well.  Of course there are many resources online.

In my experience, I have read all kinds of advice and talked to people about methods and then just experimented once I learned the process.

pattimair wrote:
Since then I have been making yogurt using a yogurt culture.  One time I was out of culture and used some store bought yogurt for the starter.  It was a plain yogurt from Oikos. 

I have almost exclusively used store bought yogurt and not cultures (and then my own yogurt made from the initial yogurt).  I've had good luck with Fage (a Greek kind) and a local Austin brand that uses Bulgarian culture.
The Austin one even has instructions on how to use it.  I've only had one batch that didn't make properly using the Austin stuff.  My temp was high on those batches as well, my other post goes into that more.

pro-biotic caps work too.... well, if they don't take them back, 'cause if they won't yog milk, they won't do you any good as a pro-biotic either.

Misfit I never would have thought of a wine making supply place for cheese starters but that makes sense.  And Len, I was wondering about that-whether the probiotic capsules would work.  It would be a good test of their "aliveness".  Thanks

www.thegoatstore.com or call 1 800 221 4628 and ask for a catalog.  This is Hoegger Supply Co. where I buy various cultures, rennet, cheese press, cream seperator etc.  Good products and service. 

pattimair wrote:
Misfit I never would have thought of a wine making supply place for cheese starters but that makes sense.  And Thanks

It certainly isn't a given, but I've seen quite a few in a few different states that sell cheese stuff.