Warm milk to 90F
Sprinkle Freeze dried mesophilic culture over the surface of the milk. Let it rehydrate for 5 min before gently incorporating it into the milk with an up and down stirring motion. If you are using clabber culture instead of mesophilic culture, whisk or stir the clabber culture into your milk to incorporate. To avoid clumps, I like to whisk my clabber culture into several cups of liquid milk before incorporating it into the entire pot.
Dilute Rennet in 1/4 cup cool water. Incorporate gently, but thoroughly into milk.
Let sit covered for 1 hour until you achieve a clean break. A clean break is when you stick your finger under the surface of the curds, and gently lift upwards. The milk should split at the surface, in a “clean break”.
Once you achieve a clean break, cut a grid of 3/4 inch cubes. This means cut horizontally, vertically, and up and down so that your curds are 3/4 inch cubes. Let them sit for 5 min so that they “firm up”.
Stir curds gently for 20-30 min or until they have shrunk slightly, and when pressed between your fingers, they break apart, but have a slight firmness, similar to a poached egg.
Let curds settle to the bottom of your pot. Scoop off the whey and reserve about half a gallon for a salt brine (I always reserve a little bit more just to be safe). An important step in preventing something called "dissolving feta", is to treat your whey the exact same as you treat your cheese. This means you want it to live beside your cheese at whatever temperature your cheese is, and you want to salt it at the same time that you salt your cheese.
Drain remaining curds through a cloth lined colander. Drain 5 min.
Fill feta cheese forms by gently scooping the curds into the forms. You can use designated forms, or old yogurt containers with holes punched in them, or alternatively, you can leave your curds in the cloth lined colander, tie the cheese cloth and hang it from a cupboard.
Place cheese forms on a rack with a drip tray underneath. Flip cheeses in the forms every 10 min for the first hour. After this, allow cheeses to sit in forms for about 8 hours. At this time, keep your whey beside your cheese. You want it to stay at a similar temperature so that it continues to acidify at a similar rate as your cheese.
Remove cheese from the forms. If needed cut the cheeses so that they will fit in your gallon jar. Dry salt the cheeses by rubbing the entire surfaces of the cheeses with a small amount of salt. Don't exceed 1tsp of salt per 1 lb of cheese. At this time if your cheese still feels fairly "squishy or flimsy", place cheese back in the cheese forms so that it does not loose shape. At this time, make your whey into a salt brine. Do this by mixing 1part salt to 10 parts whey. For example, if you have 1/2 gallon of whey use approximatly 3/4 cup salt. If your whey has developed a cream skim on top, you can skim it off at this time.
Leave the cheeses to air dry on the counter (You can remove them from the cheese forms at anytime that you feel they will hold their shape). Leave them to dry until they have formed dry rinds, and are no longer “squishy”. This can take anywhere between a day to three to achieve. If it takes longer, you may notice a small amount of mold growth. Wash this off with your salt brine. If your house is hot, consider moving them to a cooler spot in the house like a basement or drying them in your cheese cave or refrigerator. To dry them in your cheese cave or refrigerator place them on a drying mat in a Tupperware container with the lid slightly ajar, this will keep them from drying out too quickly on the outside before they are dry on the inside. Again, during this time, keep your whey brine with your cheese.
Submerge cheeses in your prepared whey brine. Ensure that your cheeses are completely covered in brine, you can use a ferment weight to keep them under the brine, or pack them in firmly so that no cheese is sticking above the brine. Move your cheese to the refrigerator or a temperature controlled aging area.
They will be ready to eat after only a few weeks, but they just get better with time! Using good quality, fresh milk. This batch will yield approximately a 1 gallon jar filled with Feta cheese.