Have you ever tried to make homemade mozzarella just to make ricotta cheese? Trust me, I was there and probably wasted 50 gallons of good milk for a year before I gave up. At the time, I was trying to learn how to make mozzarella cheese by following the traditional web-wide recipe listed below.

1. Heat store-bought milk to 50 degrees F and add citric acid

2. Heat milk to 88 – 90 degrees F

3. Add 1/4 teaspoon of rennet per gallon of milk

4. Cover and let sit for one hour.

5. Clean break test

6. Cut the curd into 1/2-inch squares

7. Heat the curd to 100 degrees F and let it rest for 15 minutes.

8. Place the ripe curd in a colander and let it drain.

9. Place the curd in a microwave and heat.

10. Stretch and make mozzarella balls

Sounds easy, right?

I followed this universal recipe for years and tried many different store bought milks, it never worked. I would get to step 5 and could never get a clean break. The funny thing is, I was seeing all these positive reviews from people saying they made homemade mozzarella the first time and it worked wonderfully. Then I would see other reviews of people saying they have the same problem as me over and over again. Sounds suspicious right?

After several years of absence, I tried again. Fortunately, I did some more research and found that there were certain things these websites were leaving out of the tutorials that can make or break a mozzarella recipe. After learning the cheese-making process, I hardly ever have a bad batch of mozzarella cheese, as long as the milk is the right kind.

My Mozzarella Recipe using live cultures is much better than the traditional recipe using citric acid here in the United States. It has much more flavor and is juicier. Also, Italians use cultures to make homemade mozzarella, not citric acid. Therefore, my recipe is much closer to authentic Homemade Mozzarella from Italy.

If you read my recipe on How to Make Mozzarella Cheese, you will notice that it is much longer than what you will find on other websites. Because? Because I explain the whole process step by step and certain things that can cause problems. The reason is that in order to make mozzarella cheese, you need to understand the process, not just the recipe. If you achieve this, you will almost never have a bad batch.