Goat's Milk Camembert

I've been wanting to try my Camembert recipe with goat's milk for some time now, but I've been stymied by a lack of a source for the milk. Some months ago, my friend Iva mentioned friends in Wisconsin who raise their own milking goats. We have been talking about getting some for me to try. Last week they visited and had two gallons plus a quart. I made chèvre with the quart and was pleased with the results. On Sunday I tried a Camembert.

Part of the problem with store-bought goat's milk is that everything that I have found has been ultra-pasteurized. Although this process increases the shelf life dramatically, it denatures that milk proteins. The result is that you can never get a "clean break" after you add the rennet to the milk. As a result, there is no solid curd mass to work with. That wasn't a problem with this milk. It yielded beautiful curds.

So far, I've been very happy with my first experiments with the raw goat's milk. My main surprise was that the yield of curds is smaller from the goat's milk than from the same volume of cow's milk. It will be a couple of months before this is ready to try. I'm really looking forward to that.

Since I was already working with cheese on Sunday, I decided that it was time to scrape the surface of a couple of blue cheeses that I had started about a month ago. The blue mold is growing nicely on and (I hope) in them. When the cheese looks like the photo above, you have to gently scrape away the moldy surface with a knife. Below is the after photo.

This cheese will be ready to try in a few months. I may try to hold out and save it for the Christmas holidays.