Page:Hand-book on cheese making.djvu/18

 fragilely constructed fluid under your hand. After stirring for five minutes, withdraw the dipper and let the surface of the milk come to a calm. Then pass the bottom of the empty dipper lightly over the vat to drive back any particles of cream that may be struggling to the surface. The milk will soon begin to roll up in the wake of the tin utensil in your hand in a rapidly thickening wave. Immediately withdraw the dipper, for the rennet has accomplished its mission. Turning to your vat cover, stretch it tightly over the fermenting milk. The cover mentioned should consist of a strip of canvas cloth or sheeting running the entire length of the vat and lapping slightly over its width. The cloth should be tacked to lath or other light wooden strips the width of the vat, and these supports should be about two feet apart. When not in use, the cover can be rolled up like a section of carpeting and is not at all awkward to handle. Place the cover in a closed form on one end of the vat, and, unrolling it as fast as you walk, you can stretch it to the other end in half a minute, thus keeping your milk snug and close. I prefer to use such a cover every day during the season, and they are indispensable in spring and fall. Without some such device the crust of the rapidly forming curd is chilled, retarding the action of the rennet, and the temperature of the whole mass is preceptibly lowered, which is not only undesirable but positively detrimental to the natural and perfect formation of cheese.

In the course of twenty or thirty minutes after coagulation examine your crude cheese material and see if it is ready to cut up. Thrust the forefinger into the mass, and if the curd will split cleanly in front of it, it is ready for the knives. Milk should stand about forty-five minutes after the infusion of rennet before it is cut, but if the milk is very mature in quality rennet will act on the casinecaseine [sic] more spontaneously. It may be firm enough to cut before that time; if, in such a case, the same amount of rennet had previously acted slowly on a