# Aged Provolone



## buckrun

I am about to be back in the milk big time and ready to start stockpiling cheese.
Has anyone done a sharp aged Provolone? I love that cheese because it is so flavorful but still has melting qualities.
Any input welcome.
Lee


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## Bernice

No, I haven't ventured into much beyond chevere. I do love provolone for the same reasons you do! Good stuff!


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## linuxboy

Sure, what do you want to know? Do you need a recipe or make guidelines or affinage tips or??


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## buckrun

I have made the fresh eating kind and was told that all you had to do was age-well it did not prove to be the case here but of course maybe my error so if you could provide the whole shebang I will send you a review! Always up for learning about chow! Thanks Pav. Nice to have a cheese pro on board. 
Lee


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## linuxboy

Hmm, so you made a pasta filata cheese, aged it, and it didn't turn out like a provalone? What were the defects? Because that's the gist of provolone... you make a thermophilic mozz with some lipase, and age it.

Here's the gist of it using Danisco culture:

General make details:
Use 1-2 ounces lipase per 1,000 lbs milk.
Use 1 DCU TA61/62 and 1 DCU LH100 (about quarter teaspoon each) per 100 lbs milk
Rennet per your general rennet schedule for single and double strength.
Same for CaCl2, do not exceed .01%


Process:
1). Heat to 90F, add lipase, culture, and CaCl2.
2) Wait 30-45 mins for the culture to wake up.
3) Add rennet, check for flocculation, and use a 3x multiplier for the total time.
4) Cut curd to 3/8", which is slightly smaller than hazelnut size. Heal curd for 5-10 mins.
5) Start heating, very slowly, to 95F over the first 15 mins.
6) Heat to 115F over the next 30 mins for a total time of 45 mins. Slightly higher temp, around 118F is also fine, but heat slowly.
7) Settle under whey for 15 mins for the curds to mat and drain of whey. Target pH is 6.0-6.1 at whey drain.
8 ) Pack the curds like you would for cheddar and cheddar until the pH is 5.5. Keep temp in the vat at least 95F so the thermo culture can work. The way you know it's done is you take a small chunk from the slab and put it into 170F water or nuke for a few seconds. The curd should stretch. Start this at 5.5. If it doesn't stretch enough, or doesn't stretch "right" (the strands aren't long enough, or it's not shiny enough), let the slab sit for more time and then do the test again. Ideal stretch pH is about 5.3. The reason you test earlier is because you want to get it at just the right moment and because pH doesn't tell the whole story.
9) Stretch the curd like usual for mozz. Cut into pieces/strips and put them into 170F whey and pull/knead until you have mozz.
10) Mold the mozz and after it cools a little and holds its shape, put into cold water to stop further acid development.
11) Brine at a 20-22% brine. I don't like saturated brines for home cheesemakers. It's saturated commercially for ease. Brine line normal, 2-2.5 hrs/lb for smaller cheeses under 5 lb, 3-3.5 hrs/lb for cheeses 5-10 lbs, and regular 4 hrs/lb for large cheeses.
12) Age like usual at 50-55 F, 85-90 RH. Rub the cheese with mineral oil or olive oil

Affinage is the same as for other hard cheeses, except that you have to keep the mold in check. If you don't wax or vac pack, then use a brush to get the mold off and rub it with oil.


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## buckrun

My problem was no stretch and so no melt. It was crumbly and very flavorful but acted more like a romano or some such.
I never have been good at getting a stretch! I am guessing I never get the ph low enough. I don't have a meter and using strips. I have always used saturated brine - what are the negatives of that? I dried in the open- no mold and oiled to age.
Turned and oiled again. It was good - just not like a provy. 
Thank you and I will follow your instructions and see if things come out differently. Are there equivalents of those cultures being sold in small amts for home cheesemaking under different names? The things I used were not called that.
Thanks
Lee


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## linuxboy

So you didn't get it to stretch during the make? Or after aging? It's a pasta filata style, so if you made a mozz, it shouldn't have turned crumbly after aging. If you didn't stretch it during the make, then it wasn't a provolone.

If you don't get a stretch, wait some more and try again. The acidity is crucial, and so is time. If you dumped 100x the amount of culture, for example, and let it acidity way too fast, it wouldn't stretch properly. 

If you use a saturated brine, what happens is that the outer layer of the cheese gets a lot of salt all at once and forms a barrier so that the salt doesn't reach the middle of the cheese. I mean, it does eventually, but this takes time. It's not a terrible problem for commercial makers because their cheeses undergo more quality control points, so there are fewer opportunities to screw up. For home cheesemakers, every advantage helps. And salting evenly can help with avoiding bitterness because it slows down the proteolysis rate.

The cultures I listed are l. helveticus, l. lactis (LH100), and S. thermophilus (TA series). You want to use all of them because they all contribute to the final character of a true provolone. I think dairy connection sells all of those, so should glengarry. What did you use?


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## homeacremom

Peter Dixon's recipe
I did some provolone earlier this year, but the longest any aged was 3 1/2 months :lol too many hungry people around here! - 55* fridge with a 45% humidity most of the time. I just put it in a baggie after the initial drying time because my humidity was so low. *sshh don't tell the experts* I washed the rinds periodically with brine when I was in there turning cheeses. 
One I ended up dry salting the rind because of persistent mold and another kept weeping and needed drying and rewashed frequently and didn't have great flavor at the end....didn't do something right on that one. 
We thought the flavor on the long aged provolone was best with the farmhouse culture (a blend of thermo and meso cultures). I salted the water for stretching or direct salted the curd as I finished stretching. Dropped it in a camembert mold most of the time for a uniform shape for sandwich slices. As I said above I washed the rinds frequently in the beginning and may have dry salted more than one, would have to go back and look. I don't know where I got the idea, but I was going to oil some of the rinds as an experiment....just never got it done.

We made some summer sausage that was ready about the time the tomatoes got ripe..... artisan style, fresh ground whole wheat bread, aged provolone, summer sausage and fresh tomatoes, a little mayo and cracked black pepper.... :biggrin Skipped the bread for the gluten free peoples and used lettuce leaves... still good!!


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## homeacremom

BTW, I broke down and got a  ph meter. It has been worth every penny! A few times of doing it right and it gets easier to tell from sight and texture what the ph is. After a summer of making stretched curd cheeses recording and working with correct ph levels I *might* be able to wing it, but I won't be in a hurry to get rid of the meter! :crazy There's enough variables in the raw milk that I can't control. Plus I use culture derived acidification because citric acid isn't an option for us. Measuring out bulk cultures is an experiment every time. :crazy Perfect mozzarella became a bit of an obsession for me. Not that anyone objected.


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## buckrun

For culture I used the item called Thermophillic DS on Ricki's site- cheesemaking.com.
The ingredients list s. thermophilus, d.s.lactis, helveticus and malto dextrin
This because I normally work with meso in a moderate temp range and so just got small pakts to see if I wanted to work with thermo. I ended up with far more success with the Romano Parmesan and adapted sheep cheeses in the same temp range like manchego. I continued to make these cheeses but not anything that requires a stretch!

Guess I will ask Santa for a ph meter. I know what you mean about learning to see it once you see it correctly done. Everyone says mozz is so easy but I have not found it to be so at all. Is it true that high fat content necessitates more acidity in general? I am guessing that maybe also I don't get it hot enough to stretch. 

I appreciate the input on the brine step. Will try working with lesser concentration and see if my results are tasty.
Nice details in the Dixon recipe. Thanks.
Lee


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## linuxboy

buckrun said:


> Guess I will ask Santa for a ph meter. I know what you mean about learning to see it once you see it correctly done. Everyone says mozz is so easy but I have not found it to be so at all. Is it true that high fat content necessitates more acidity in general? I am guessing that maybe also I don't get it hot enough to stretch.


Hi Lee,

Finally have some time again to read the board. The fat content requires more salt for proper aging, not acid. Acid is all about the buffering ability of casein micelles. It binds up the positive charge of k-casein. So all other things being equal, a higher concentration of protein requires more acid to achieve the same effect. If you added powdered milk to normal milk, for example, and did an experiment where the same amount of culture was added, the milk with the powdered milk would have a much broader acidification curve. That is, the pH would not drop as quickly because the casein would buffer the acid produced.


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