Sept 18 Class: Day-by-Day Progress of Your Brie
Posted on Sunday, September 18, 2016 | By Nicole Easterday |
These are the notes and photos as we track the brie we made in class on Sept 18, 2016. Follow along as we watch our delicate curds transform into gooey deliciousness.
Day 1 - Sept 18
Day 1 is the day we made the brie. We all took our basket of edible homework in a ziplock bag and hopefully remembered to drain the whey out periodically.
45 minutes after filling the basket, we flipped the curds for the first time. 3 hours later we flipped again then left it at room temperature over night.
Day 2 - Sept 19
The brie wheels are still in their baskets and I salted them on the top with a generous pinch of Kosher salt (any non-iodized salt will do). I left them for 45 minutes, still draining at room temperature then I flipped them and salted the other side.
Then I left them draining in their forms at room temperature another four hours. For those of you who were not home during the dates, it's fine to leave them at room temp until you get home.
After the four hour waiting period I removed them from their forms and put them in their aging containers to start the ripening process.
The wine fridge brie looks like this - it's in a tupperware container with a lid that is not airtight, taking up less than 40% of the space in the container:
The regular fridge brie looks like this - it's also in a tupperware container with a lid that is not airtight, taking up less than 40% of the space in the container. I'm storing it in the butter compartment in the door of my fridge because the door is the warmest area and inside the compartment it will neither be forgotten nor dried out.
Day 3 - Sept 20
Today I took both containers out to wipe any condensation. I probably could have skipped wiping the one in the regular fridge as there wasn't much there. There's no fuzz to be seen yet - right now the Geotrichum Candidum is working on preparing the surface of the brie to be inhabited by the Penicilium Candidum later on.
Here's what the condensation looked like:
Day 8 - Sept 26
What a lovely little coating of brie my wine fridge wheel is displaying!
Regular fridge brie is trucking along and does have a slight coating but you still have to look quite closely. Here are the two side-by-side.
What comes next?
Each day I'll check the wine fridge brie (every other day for the regular fridge). I'll flip the wheel and wipe the condensation from the inside of the container. Within a couple of days I'll start seeing the slightest bit of fuzz on the wine fridge brie - the regular fridge may take up to a week or even more to show the first fuzz. Be patient!
Stay tuned for more as the days go on!
