A month ago was my first attempt at feta. Let's say that in the end it wasn't a good result. But I did learn a few things. Four litres is not a gallon. If a recipe measures salt by volume you should probably ignore it and find a recipe that measures by weight. There is just too much variety in how salt is produced. An ounce of one type of salt may be half, or maybe twice as much as what is called for. My curds were just not firm enough for feta. After 4 weeks in brine the outer bits of the cheese were actually a little bit dry and crumbly and not too bad tasting, almost like feta. But the interior was soft, salty, and not feta at all.
With these lessons learned I tried a different feta recipe from
finecooking. I ignored the bits about adding calcium and lipase and just followed the general procedure. This time the curds were more firm. The cheese has been draining for 4 days and today it's headed for the brine. I'm holding out much more hope for this batch. It really tastes like cheese.
