it's still going, now aged two months. I wasn't sure we'd last the distance, since it sits in its box near the front door smelling all cheesy and inviting, but now we've come this far I know we can make it to three months.
it has shrunk a little, but rather alarmingly it weighs only 600g now. this is slightly odd. although it is generally agreed that I am (almost) completely innumerate, I could've sworn it weighed 1800g as a newly formed cheese. unfortunately I don't have a photograph of the cheese on the scales back then, so I don't know if it has lost two-thirds of its weight to dehydration, or if I'm just inept at reading scales and it actually weighed 800g (it's been known to happen...)
applying my (cough) mathematical prowess might help. romano is a low yield cheese, leaving you with 7-9% of the original milk solids. I think in cheese making this guideline generally expresses volume however I've not measured the cubic mass of 6 litres of milk. but seeing as nothing is added to the cheese in the process (except minute amounts of starters and salt), the equation should roughly translate into weight.
so one litre of cows milk weighs 1087g. the romano is made with 6 litres, so the original milk weight was 6.52kg. divide that by 10 because it's too hard to work out 7-9% any other way and (finding calculator- sorry Dad, I know it's disappointing, you tried so hard) the result is 652.2g, so the cheese is now a bit less than 10% of the original milk weight. which proves absolutely nothing about what it weighed two months ago. all those years I told those teachers, and my Dad, that math was a pointless waste of time. proven.
it probably means, though, that the cheese can do a little more drying to shed those extra couple of percentage points that I can't calculate. more oiling of the surface and here's hoping that the paste has formed correctly under the rind without any air pockets.
