Our production manager really gets into her work! Here she reaches to the bottom of the vat for the last of the cheese…
Posts under ‘Cheesemaking’
Making Goat Cheese in Spain
I found this very cool article on the Mother Earth News website. Originally published in 1975, it offers recipes and insight into the traditional art of making goat cheese in Andalusia – complete with the making of traditional rennet. We’ll stick with non-animal rennet, thanks… but the observations on making cheese are fascinating and inspiring. [...]
Buttermilk as Cheese Culture
CheeseForum.org offers instructions on how to use fresh buttermilk as a mesophilic culture for making cheese. Mesophilic cultures are used for many cultured cheeses, from Queso Blanco to Chevre, Jack to Tome. We offered a simple recipe for making cheese from buttermilk here.
Q&A: Does Goat Cheese Contain lactose?
Q: Does Goat cheese have lactose in it? A: Goat milk has about the same amount of lactose as cow milk. However, the cheese making process converts lactose to lactic acid, which is what gives cheese its flavor. The longer a cheese is aged, the less lactose it has – and this is true of [...]
Tips on Sanitation for Home Dairying
If you want to make great cheese, you have to start with good, clean milk. When we first started milking for our own use, we used a simple wood milking stand and mostly plastic equipment. This would never pass inspection for a licensed dairy, but works well for home dairying. The main thing is, anything [...]
Cheddaring
Cheddaring is the process that makes Cheddar cheese what it is. It’s a draining process that no other cheese uses. First the curds are dry-stirred, then allowed to ,mat together. The matted cheese is cut into slabs and turned every ten minutes to keep it warm and let the whey drain off. As the slabs [...]
Cheese Class
Last week I attended the Advanced Cheese Making Short Course at Utah State University in Logan. It was four days long, and combined lectures on chemistry, sanitation, cheese evaluation, and statistics – along with actually making eight different cheeses. Yes, it was pretty intense. The class is designed for artisan cheese makers, and is very [...]
More on the FDA Crackdown on Cheesemakers
“I’ve got long-aged cheeses, and they never tested positive [for bacteria]. To make us throw it all away, without any valid proof at all, without any illnesses, is just wrong.” –Kelli Estrella of the Estrella Family Creamery in Montesano, WA. The Washington Post details more FDA crackdowns, some legitimate and some extreme.
Raw Milk Cheese in Jeopardy?
The New York Times reports that in the wake of several outbreaks of E. coli in gourmet cheeses, and at least nine recalls, the FDA is exploring new rules to try to improve food safety. The article notes that the “6o Day Rule” – that cheese is safe if it is aged for 60 days [...]
Habanero Cheese – Version 2.0
We found some really fresh habanero peppers at the market last week. That, combined with complaints that our first habanero cheese wasn’t hot enough, inspired us to give it another try. We now have “Light My Fire” cheese version 2.0, soft cow cheese flavored with a delightful blend of habanero, Serrano, and jalapeno peppers, with [...]
