Pepato

I probably don't need to tell you how proud I am of this cheese. The fact that I have dedicated an entire post to it, and allowed room for five photos in that post probably speaks for itself.
I kind of feel like it's our first block of cheese. As I mentioned in my previous post, we have made Fetta before. But what I didn't mention was that we had a few hiccups with it in the making process. The end result was still lovely cheese, but it could have been better.

This block, however, this beautiful round Pepato, had a perfect making process. It was relaxing to make as everything went smoothly.
After soaking in it's brine for 8 hours, it had to dry on a rack for two days. Then early this morning it was ready to go back into the cheese fridge to mature for a month or two (it can mature for up to 12 months, but I'm realistic and know we won't hold out that long). We sliced it into eight wedges, packaged them using the vaccum sealer and put them into the fridge. You can of course mature your cheese as a whole wheel, but we thought it made more sense just to slice it up now, rather than packing the whole wheel, and then having to repack it in it's wedges once it is mature. This way we can just get out one wedge at a time to use, which will completely wipe out the chance of any being wasted due to spoiling.

I'm really looking forward to tasting it. You can probably expect to see this cheese feature in yet another post when the time comes, although I'll try not to dedicate an entire post to it again:-)

*Pepato is a semi-hard cheese, traditionally made with sheep's milk. It is made with pepper corns, which are added to the curds after removing the whey.