Thoroughly clean and sterilize all equipment and surfaces.
Warm milk to 90F. Add in Clabber culture and stir to incorporateORIf using freeze dried culture, sprinkle culture over the surface of the milk and let rehydrate for 5 min. Incorporate Culture into milk with an up and down stirring motion. Dilute Calcium Chloride in 1/4 cup lukewarm water. Incorporate into milk. (Only if you are using pasteurized milk.)
Dilute Rennet in 1/4 lukewarm water. Incorporate into milk with an up and down stirring motion. Cover pot and let ripen for 30 min - 1 hour.
Check for a clean break. Using a knife, cut curds into 1 inch cubes. Let sit for 5 min between each layer of cuts. This whole cutting process will take 10-15 min.
Gently stir curds for a few minutes. Work to get all large chunks in the pot down to a similar sizeof 1 inch cubes. After a few minutes of stirring, take a curd from the pot, (whom's size represents themajority of the curds in the pot) hold it 30 cm above the counter and let it drop. If it splats into a bunchof pieces, stir the curds for a few more minutes. However if it bounces slightly, you are ready to move onto the next step.
Put the lid on the pot and let rest for 3-5 hours. Depending on the warmth of your house, the quality of the starter culture and the milk, you will want to start checking your culture to see if it will stretch after about 3 hours but I usually don't expect a stretch until 5.
To check if it will stretch boil a small amount of hot water. Submerge one of the curds into the hot water and let rest for 1 min. Using a fork to lift the curd out of the pot gently begin dipping the curd in and out of the hot water as you would dip a tea bag in and out of a cup of tea. Up, down, up, down. Do this until the curd breaks. If the curd does not break, but instead stretches indefinitely (I'm talking, you could stretch it to the roof), it is ready to move on to the next step.You will most likely have to do this stretch test more than once throughout the course of the next few hours. You will notice that the cheese does begin to stretch more and more, but it is not ready until it no longer breaks off, but instead stretches almost indefinitely until the weight of the bottom curd inevitably pulls the stretch apart.Imagine the ultimate cheese pull! That is what you are looking for. When you do finally achieve the ultimate stretch, you have a very short window to catch it. If it goes too far, it will no longer stretch, so plan to move onto the next step as soon as possible and for sure within the hour. To stretch your cheese boil a 8 quart pot of water. Dip the whey off of your curd mass, and pour off any remaining whey.Pour approximately half of the boiling water onto your curd mass. Using a wooden spoon or heat resistant rubber gloves, slowly start to knead the cheese under the hot water. As soon as it starts stretching you can do 1 of 3 things.1. Pull and fold chunks of cheese into mozzarella balls. Be careful not to overwork these balls. I liken the technique of forming mozzarella balls to making buns. Submerge them in a cold water bath after stretching to keep them round. Make some of them into tiny Bocconcini balls!2. As soon as your cheese begins to stretch, knead the mass of curd a few times before transferring the whole mass to a holed cheese form. Use my easy shredding technique to make this into shreddable mozzarella cheese.3. As soon as the cheese begins to stretch begin folding and pulling the cheese into a long rope. This is string cheese! To salt your cheese you have 3 options.1. Make a light 2% brine using the reserved whey. Store your cheese in this brine in the fridge. This sometimes results in a slimy cheese, so I do prefer other methods of salting.2. Use the easy shredding technique! Listed below.3. Surface salt your cheese. Sprinkle a small amount of salt onto the surface of your cheese and enjoy right away!