alexrapp: Skyr (the Pirate cheese)

Origins

Norwegian originally (9thC) then moved over to Iceland. It died out in Norway (11thC) and is now a purely Icelandic cheese. This is a very ‘difficult’ cheese as most of the references say that you can only make Skyr from Skyr. A number of online sources tell of some very different processes for making a simulation of this cheese if you don’t have access to Skyr.

With unhomogenised cow’s milk -

1. Using a sour cream starter

2. Using a yoghurt starter

3. Using a buttermilk starter

With crème fraiche

1. Using a sour cream starter

With sheeps milk

1. Using yogurt and sour cream as a starter

Some research into the specific bacteria’s found in Skyr produced interesting results. The bacterial makeup is found in a combination of live yoghurt cultures (Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus and Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, amongst others).

9^th-11thC it would have been made with sheep’s milk, Iceland having a particular breed of sheep as well. It was then transferred over to being made with cow’s milk, but that is much more recent (and post-1600).

My Testing Attempts

I have limited access to sheeps milk and the creme fraiche option was going to be way to expensive for the feast, so I went with the cows milk options. I toyed with making my own creme fraiche briefly, but I only had 5 days notice for making the cheese for the feast so thought it better to go with a simpler solution.

Given the variance in the methods, I did three test batches before making up the final for the Feast.

Method/s:

Sour cream	Yoghurt	Buttermilk
1Lt unhomogenised milk ¼ tablet of rennet Ml of live culture sour cream	1Lt unhomogenised milk ¼ tablet of rennet Ml of live culture yoghurt	1Lt unhomogenised milk ¼ tablet of rennet Ml of live culture buttermilk
3Lt of milk was heated to 93oC Divided into 3 pots of 1Lt each Allowed to cool naturally to 40oC Rennet and culture was added and gently stirred Pots where then wrapped in towels and moved to the linen cupboard for 12 hours Curd was cut and transferred into muslin Hung over a bowl in the fridge for 24 hours

Results:

Sour cream	Yoghurt	Buttermilk
Curd was ok	Curd was firm	Curd was still a little loose
Hung for 24 hours only	Hung for 24 hours only	Hung for 24 hours then was in a strainer for another 12 hours
Tasted plain	Tasted creamy	Tasted plain

Given the results of the testing (and the fact that I can’t know what Skyr would taste like to compare it) I chose to use the yoghurt cultured method for the feast cheese. It had a lovely tangy note to it which made it stand out from the other two which ended up quite bland.

Feast Cheese

Seems to have been met with positive results and feedback. Was very tasty with the roasted beef that was served, as well as just with the fresh bread :D I ate a bowl all by myself!