Mozzarella Fail!

I sincerely hope that this is the Part 1 of 2 blog posts. And I sincerely hope that the second post is raving about success. Because this is really just to share a complete and dismal failure.

Victoria (of Ricotta success fame) came over to make mozzarella.  We were so excited.

We had before us 2 Gallons of milk. As experienced cheese makers, we knew that a challenge was at our feet. We knew that mozzarella was going to be more complicated than the oh-so simple ricotta. While we also knew from past experience that we should have more than one gallon at the ready, we commented that when things worked out smoothly it would be great to have two - yes 2 - mozzarella cheeses.

Oh-ho-ho. The hubris. Little did we know.

The end of the first Gallon looked like a cross between cottage cheese and ricotta. First failure.

Gallon 2 went largely undocumented as it went much the way of Gallon 1. 

By Gallon 3 we thought we might have hit the right note. 

Look at how it looks like it might be stretchy!!

We were so sure we were on a roll this time!

We started to have some concerns right around here....

We stayed with the instructions and tried to turn it into a log.

Um..... Our log.

 The closest we ever got... it looks more like goat cheese. It's not. It was disgusting.

Full disclosure: the wine either saved or doomed the night! We may have poured the wine with a little bit of a heaver hand as the failures continued to mount.

The evening ended in success! To boost our egos, we made another delicious batch of ricotta and decided to blame the milk!

And Zoe, our cheese making companion, still loved us!