Making Cheese - Batch One

I bought a cheese-making kit from cheesemaking.com and tried a batch tonight with Target's Market Fresh brand of whole milk (with vitamin D). The expiration date was June 9th. It basically worked, but the texture and taste is not great. It's edible, but it's dry and crumbles instead of stretches, and needs salt (at a minimum) to taste good. It tastes very bland (below mild) even for mozzarella cheese. It took a little over an hour from dissolving the rennet to putting the cheese balls in cold water and there are several things I must remember before trying a second batch. 1. Make sure I have chlorine free water (I'm not sure if I did this time). 2. Make a thermometer hanger so I don't have to hold it in center of pot. 3. Start rennet dissolving about 20 minutes (?) before I want to use it. Ten minutes was not enough for it to be completely dissolved. 4. Cut the curd in diagonal cuts (from top), skipping the vertical cut which made the curd too small (I think). 5. Add salt at start of cheese folding process. 6. Get rubber gloves for the cheese folding step (180 degrees is very hot). 7. Get rinse water to 180 degrees, 140 degrees was not hot enough. 8. Stop folding cheese when it gets smooth and shiny. I think that I kept folding and stretching too long. 9. Use an ice water bath once complete (cold tap water may not have been cold enough to stop process). I have 29 more batches to try. :)