Cheese!

I have been on a real cheese kick the past week. On Sunday I made a little wheel of havardi, and then yesterday I made some havardi with dill. Tonight I'm going to try a different variety. We're getting about a gallon of extra milk every day now (through mid-summer when we begin calving) so I will probably be making a lot more cheese.

Now begins the battle of the mold, though. I'm trying two different methods with my havardis (what is the plural of that anyway??). With the short wheel I'm trying a salt-cure method- basically covering the entire wheel with salt.

My second wheel (BF called it a horn... I'm still not sure what the difference is between a wheel and a horn, but I think the horn is tall and a wheel is short. So it could be classified as a horn), the dill havardi, I actually followed the recipe and it's now soaking in a salt brine. I'm going to leave it there for a day and try rubbing it with dry salt (though not storing it in the salt like with havardi #1). I put the cylinder in a large plastic pitcher and poured the brine over it (less waste than if I would have used a wider container). The wheel-horn wanted to float to the top, so I had to put a jar of water on it to hold it down.