Last year we received several inquiries (and at least one complaint) about the rennet we were using. Rennet is the compound that contains the enzymes that coagulate the milk, which allows the curds to be separated from the whey. Typically, rennet comes from one of three sources: the traditional veal rennet, which is extracted from [...]
Posts Tagged ‘making cheese’
Getting Into Her Work
Our production manager really gets into her work! Here she reaches to the bottom of the vat for the last of the cheese…
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.
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 [...]
Preserving Food in the Modern World: Punk Domestics
Punk Domestics is an amazing site with recipes for preserving lemons, making cranberry sauce with rosemary and juniper, and composting with worms– along wioth a multitude of other unusual tricks and treats. Don’t miss their cheesemaking section for easy recipes you can make at home!!
Cheese Recipes
Peter Dixon, a cheese consultant in Vermont, offers some great free recipes for the serious cheesemaker.
Making Cheese
D.J. making cheese (Brigette Adams Photo) It’s been a long and educational week. On Monday, we bought our first load of cow milk, 532 gallons, from a local dairy. Then the fun began. Nothing ever works quite like it looks on paper! Equipment failures and unanticipated challenges started before I’d even gotten the milk home. [...]
Things we learned from our first batch of cheese
Yesterday we used our new equipment to make its first batch of cheese. It was an educational experience. We did end up with cheese– time will tell whether it comes out like it should. And we learned a few things: Our minimum batch size is 50 gallons. We tried to make a 30 gallon batch, [...]
