Cheesemaking 101

My mind was officially blown wide open at last weekend's cheese making workshop. I learned that making a round of delicious homemade cheese is just as easy as making a loaf of homemade bread!

We learned how to make three styles of cheeses. The first and easiest is straining dairy products through a cheesecloth to produce soft cheeses like chevre, labane, and cream cheese. The second method is the one I was familiar with which is making acid cheeses like paneer, using vinegar or lemon juice to curdle milk.

Making delicious, soft and spreadable cheese from yogurt. The yogurt is salted, wrapped in cheesecloth, and left to drain in a fridge overnight. The next day it is heavenly cheese.

Curds and whey that are on their way to becoming a pressed round of cheese.

The third and most exciting method was rennet cheese. Basically this entailed culturing milk at body temperature (with either kefir or the juice from quality yoghurt) and then adding rennet, cutting the cheese curds, and forming a pressed cheese round. YUM.

Fresh, raw milk is the best milk to use. Regular pasteurized and processed milk from the supermarket will not do for making most cheeses, because the aging process for cheese relies on the enzymes and natural environment present in milk in its natural state.

This round of cheese can be aged into brie or camembert, inoculated with bread mould into blue cheese, brined into feta, fermented and stretched into mozzarella, and more. The basic recipe is the same.

Many of my thoughts about cheese and whey were disproved by David at the workshop. I understood that "whey" was the by product of an acid cheese like paneer, but in actuality true whey is something else. The by product of an acid cheese has little nutritive value left, while whey made from rennet cheeses is highly nutritious and can be further separated into MORE cheeses, like ricotta!

Squeaky cheese curds! All we did was cook the curds instead of pressing them into a round.

Our cheese teacher was growing mold for making blue cheese.

An example of an aged round of cheese.

Rennet, the ingredient used to make milk separate into curds and whey, is a controversial substance because it is essentially made up of the fourth stomach of a milk-fed calf, lamb, or other ruminating animal. It works the best, but some alternative curdling agents were discussed, including cardoon flower petals. WHO KNEW??

 

Our lovely workshop teacher, David! Here he is with his bushy moustache, stretching the mozzarella. He was an amazing teacher and really knew his stuff.

His website is full of recipes and more information

www.thewayofcheese.com

Thanks for reading.

 I look forward to posting more as the days grow longer and I have more time for quilting and crafting.