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It seems appropriate for me to try recreate the Oxford Blue Cheese from The Oxford Cheese Company. Oxford Blue is a soft blue cheese originally made for the refectory of Magdalen College Oxford. I don't know where it was originally made but it is now made in Derbyshire by Dairy Crest

I started with a small piece of Oxford blue made to a paste in a litre of full fat milk and incubated it at 30 deg C for a few hours, added a splash of calcium and Rennet and left it to set for 3 hours in an insulated container. I cut the curds and left another 2 hours. I drained off the extra whey and poured the whole lot onto a fine sieve and let it drain overnight before moulding into a ball by hand and putting it in the fridge (9 deg C) to dry and drain on a piece of greaseproof paper. Once it had stopped weeping I shaped it into a cylinder using a tin can. It's about 10 days old now and blueing up nicely:



Dave

Nice one Dave, looks good.
What's the reason for not moulding it straight away?

Looks nice, got a blue going right now myself will post later. usualy leaving it a day befor molding is to increase the acid content.

I originally planned to leave it as a hand moulded ball but on a whim late last night I decided it would look better that shape. Having said that I think it drained better and shaped better in the mould after resting first, but I can't pretend there was a rational reason for doing it

Dave

Edit: I just read Blue Cheese's post which he posted while I was writing mine so apparently there was a good reason for doing what I did

Looks terrific! What's in the background of the pic? Brie with chocolate powder coating?

Looks like cheesecake with chocolate or one of those wagon wheel thingies.

You don't really want to know do you?

It's a cheese between two corrugated cardboard formers, with grease proof paper between the cheese and the cardboard. It's an experimental semi-permeable layer I'm playing with, you got an early peek before Iknow whether it works

Dave

LOL -conv-

Looks like Oxford Blue is back in Oxford:

This is a day later:



Dave

That looks absolutely fantastic! A masterwork!

Jen

My jaw dropped when I looked at it tonight, I was totally stunned.

But I need to make another one before I start celebrating...

Dave

Hope its not too warm and turn into cambozola

9.4 deg Centigrade

It's biggest problem is I might eat it, all of it

I had an idea
Junior is looking very healthy, so I thought I'd teach him to swim. I let him sink or swim in a pint of milk for 2 hours before letting him back in the fridge. That pint has now gone on to make a new cheese. If this works I'm self sustaining on the cheese front

When it doesn't work you can all have a good laugh at my expense

Dave