Homemade Mozzarella

Today I used the cheese kit to make mozzarella. It really did only take 30 minutes. Here were the things that suprised me:

• so much whey left over- not much cheese... this has nothing to do with the kit, but just the amount of solids vs liquids that make up the milk. I used the whey to make bread, and pizza crust for the pizza. The crust had a warm. sweet flavor. The bread didnt rise quite right, but also was sweet(er). Even with making a double batch of bread and two pizza crusts, I had about a half gallon of whey left over. Seems like a lot of whey-ste (sorry, bad pun).
• The milk and cheese have a very sweet smell while cooking- not really a smell I've associated with mozzarella before, more with hot cocoa.
• I think I need to add lipase powder- this is an optional powder that you can add to make your italian cheeses more flavorful. The mozzarella I made without it was fine, but kind of bland. I used a bit more salt than recommended, but it still needed something else. But it was great on the pizza.

For the pizza, I made the dough using the whey, shredded the cheese, and made a sauce from fresh tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar, garlic and herbs from the garden (mint, basil). It worked out to be pretty tasty.

The kit

Heating the milk

The cheese

The pizza