Cooking with Kids - Cheese and Pizza!

First thing in the morning yesterday, we made mozzarella cheese.

It takes a lot of milk to make one ball of mozzarella cheese (3.8 liters - or one gallon of whole milk - the fattier the better!).

Paloma added salt, citric acid and rennet to get the whole milk to separate into curds (solids for the cheese) and whey (the liquid left over).

This is what it looked like once we poured off the whey. We then had to heat it up enough to get the curds really stretchy, in order to get that rubbery and slightly stringy texture of fresh mozzarella.

At first, it was too hot for Paloma to handle so I got it started.

Then Paloma worked it into a ball, folding the cheese in on itself until it was shiny and smooth on the outside.

Paloma claims not to like cheese unless it is on pizza....so we made pizza! We used the warm whey left over from the cheese to make the dough. It was a scorcher outside so we filled the kiddie pool and swam until the dough was ready.

She decorated her personal pizza with pepperoni and tons of the fresh cheese she made herself :).
We used the whole ball of mozzarella and had a pizza picnic in the backyard.