Chapter 285: Manufacturing Cheese
The day after the successful bread making, in the Xiang Family Kitchen.
“Aren’t we going to keep making bread?”
Ainuo looked at the milk and white vinegar placed in front of them, doubtfully.
“Of course we are. Isn’t this just preparing for the next new bread?”
Xiang Chuan blinked and said.
She wasn’t lying at all. After all, pizza bread existed in some countries, so it was perfectly normal for her to make cheese in order to make pizza bread.
“……Milk makes sense, but this……is vinegar, right? Can it be used for bread?”
Ainuo’s words made Ouyang Yating and Liang Gong, standing on either side, nod one after another, their faces full of doubt.
“This isn’t for the bread. What we’re making now is an ingredient that’s essential for the bread we’ll make next……or rather, a seasoning?”
Xiang Chuan scratched her head. In her impression, cheese was basically an ingredient used to add flavor to food, but because of its high fat content, it was rarely considered a proper ingredient, so in her impression, cheese’s role in cooking was more like a seasoning.
Seasoning?
The three looked doubtfully at the milk and white vinegar on the countertop.
How to combine this? Pour white vinegar into the milk?
Sour milk as seasoning?
Were recipes from ancient times this wild?——
Xiang Chuan, who was just a baking novice in her previous life, naturally couldn’t explain cheese’s role or production principle, so she could only operate while instructing them on some precautions for the steps.
She poured the milk into a small pot, heated it over medium heat to nearly eighty-five degrees, then quickly turned off the heat.
Just as Ouyang Yating and the others thought Xiang Chuan was about to do something with the milk skin or similar that was about to float to the surface of the heated milk, she suddenly picked up the white vinegar beside her.
Huh? Put it in now?
Xiang Chuan didn’t have time to answer their doubts right now. She had to pour the white vinegar in quickly before the milk cooled, but not too much. Before breakfast that morning, Xiang Chuan had specially asked the small chef to prepare about forty milliliters of white vinegar, which was just right for about two liters of milk.
The process of adding white vinegar couldn’t be like sprinkling salt all at once, but rather stirring while slowly adding the white vinegar. Xiang Chuan was a bit nervous now too. At least she had made bread a few times in her previous life, but making cheese was truly her first time.
Will it be okay?
Xiang Chuan felt a bit timid too.
Fortunately, this simple cheese had a high fault tolerance. Plus, she had done similar operations when making tofu before, so this time when adding the white vinegar as a coagulant, no overly outrageous accidents occurred.
After she poured all the white vinegar in, she stirred for a while. Soon, the milk rapidly separated into many white flocculent substances at a visible speed, and the liquid in the pot turned egg yolk green.
Xiang Chuan had the small chef bring over the filter equipment prepared that morning, poured the white flocculent substances from the pot into it, and placed a basin underneath to catch the remaining liquid dripping from the white flocculent substances.
In no time, only the white flocculent substances aggregated into a solid mass remained on the filter.
Normally, it wouldn’t filter this quickly. From her experience making Greek yogurt in her previous life, filtering whey normally took at least half a day. Filtering so much so quickly was thanks to the modern filter’s excellent filtration efficiency; otherwise, everyone would have to stare at this filter all day.
Xiang Chuan took out the white solid mass, rinsed it with cold water several times, then handed it to Ainuo, Ouyang Yating, and the others.
“Come smell if there’s any sour smell. I just smelled a lot, and my sense of smell is a bit numb now.”
Hearing Xiang Chuan say this, the three exchanged glances.
In the end, Ouyang Yating was the first to step forward reluctantly, followed by Ainuo and Liang Gong.
After the three took turns confirming that this solid mass had no sour vinegar smell unique to white vinegar, Xiang Chuan had the small chef find a new filter container and put the white flocculent substances in again, but this time she added a metal item that had been washed, sterilized, and could be used for processing.
The purpose was to squeeze out the remaining moisture inside.
“Alright, wait one or two hours, and this cheese will be done.”
Xiang Chuan clapped her hands, and the small chef immediately brought over a towel for washing hands.
Huh?
At this moment, Ouyang Yating and the other two were dumbfounded.
They had thought it would involve some complex operations like steamed milk pudding……and it was just over like this?
They looked doubtfully at the white solid mass in the filter.
How to put it……although it didn’t smell like anything creepy just now, this thing doesn’t look very appetizing……
——
When Li Wei came to the kitchen, what he saw was this bizarre scene:
Three people standing by the cabinet staring at a filter device containing a white solid, looking with complex expressions at the drops of yellow-green liquid dripping from the filter device into the basin below.
“Aren’t you making that……bread today?”
Li Wei still wasn’t very fluent with this unfamiliar name.
Ainuo ignored him, but Liang Gong nearby looked up and explained their plans for the day to Li Wei.
“……Ingredient? Seasoning? This……milk seasoned with white vinegar?”
Li Wei’s mouth twitched. These past few days, on the recommendation of the Xiang family, he had gradually come to like having a cup of hot milk morning and evening; he really liked that fragrant drink.
So now, he couldn’t imagine what kind of taste it would be to add sour white vinegar seasoning to sweet-smelling milk.
Thus, the number of people watching the filter by the cabinet went from three to four, all with expressions of indescribable bewilderment.
“By the way, that whey……wow! Brother Li Wei, when did you get here?”
Xiang Chuan, who was in the corner of the kitchen munching on dim sum specially prepared by the small chef while looking at Geegle on a light screen, finally noticed the extra person in the kitchen.
“I just got here. Why are you using such a strange seasoning to flavor milk this time? Did ancient people use sour milk to make food?”
The combination of white vinegar and milk was too explosive, so Li Wei blurted out the confusion in his heart without thinking.
Xiang Chuan blinked her eyes.
“Generally speaking, ancient people wouldn’t drink something as strange as white vinegar mixed with milk either, but yogurt made from naturally fermented lactic acid bacteria was a globally popular drink back then, and it could even be used to dip fruit.”
Huh?
The shock of white vinegar plus milk hadn’t passed, and now the magical equation “sour milk = drink ancient people liked” gave the four another bout of thunderstruck enjoyment.
“The method isn’t hard either. Perfect timing, I’m going to use the whey to try making yogurt now. It’ll probably be ready tomorrow or tonight; you can taste it then.”
With that, Xiang Chuan removed the basin under the filter and replaced it with another empty small basin.
By now, the liquid dripping from the white solid in the filter was already very little; even if the rest was thrown away, Xiang Chuan wouldn’t feel any heartache.
Two liters of milk yielded curds about the size of two palms after filtering, but there was quite a lot of whey; the basin in Xiang Chuan’s hands was pretty heavy—this could make a lot of yogurt.
She glanced at the recipe on the light screen: one liter of milk only needed about ten milliliters of whey, and there was at least three jin or so in her basin, which converted to about one and a half liters.
Thank goodness she hadn’t forgotten the unit conversions from math class during her nine years of compulsory education.
Xiang Chuan sighed.
Unfortunately, unfortunately, fruit production hasn’t come up yet.
They’d used up a lot of the home stock for making dim sum and fruit milk, and the warehouse reserves were almost gone. Right now, the Agriculture Bureau was collecting fruit circulating on the market to extract seeds for research, causing the prices of fruit available on the market to skyrocket almost to the level of seafood back then.
Seafood prices had actually dropped now, because simply processed river fresh could satisfy the Third Fleet residents’ pursuit of white meat.
The Xiang Family had thought about restocking their fruit warehouse too—after all, Xiang Weiguo’s company and Xiang Xue’s streaming website had earned enough money for the whole family to eat fruit three times a day—but there was supply but no demand. The Agriculture Bureau was watching, not to mention other wealthy families who also wanted to taste fresh fruit.
It had gotten to the point where Xiang Chuan hadn’t had fruit milk since today, let alone using it to pair with yogurt.
If she used freshly made chilled yogurt paired with fresh fruit to make fruit salad, then at tonight’s dinner, she wouldn’t have ended up with a sore throat from overheating after nonstop munching on french fries and potato wedges.
Xiang Chuan muttered to herself inwardly.
