The Raw Milk Blog

by luxomedia

Homemade Feta Cheese Making Gouda, Feta, Goat Cheddar Recipes

Making cheese at home is not exactly an activity you could just kill some time with. It requires constant discovery, trial, and error, some degree of expertise, and loads of patience.  In its most basic form, cheese is made by removing the water content in dairy milk. Soft cheese contains more water, while hard cheese is drier. Thus, cream cheese would have a higher water content than, say, cheddar cheese.

Water, which forms over 85 per cent of the constitution of milk, can be removed in a number of ways. The easiest is to just add some vinegar or lemon juice to the milk to make it split into milk curds, made up of the solid components of milk and whey, which is essentially the water.
A more refined process would be to use bacteria cultures to make the milk acidic and therefore coagulate. This is a preferred option because the bacteria also gives the cheese obtained a characteristic flavour.
While this is the basic process, the details vary, given the kind of cheese one sets out to make.
Any kind of milk may be used for cheese-making as long as it is fresh. Try any of these:
·    Raw sheep
·    Goat
·    Cow’s milk
·    Pasteurized milk
·    Packaged skim milk
Store-purchased milk of any variety, however, is homogenized, which means that the cream particles in the milk have been pulverized to avoid separation of cream and milk. Making cheese directly using this milk may not be fruitful. Consequently, it is suggested to add heavy cream to the milk, in a proportion of 1 to 7.
Addition of Calcium Chloride will also help reconstitute the protein structure of the milk, making it better for cheese-making.
The next stage is to add a suitable starter culture to increase acidity levels, depending on the kind of cheese you are looking to make. Streptococcus thermophilus makes for good Camembert, Gouda and Baby Swiss cheese, while using Lactococcus lactis cultures is good for hard cheeses like Feta and Chevre. Italian cheeses like Parmesan and Mozzarella use Lactobacillus helveticus bacteria as starters.
These cultures are available over the counter and can also be cultured at home. But it is more convenient and less disaster-prone to use the purchasable varieties, which only need to be added to the milk. The next step would be to add the rennet which will cause the milk to coagulate.
After allowing the solution to stand for a day or two, the whey can be drained off. The ‘cheese’ you have now is wholly edible, and you can heat it to remove more of the whey and harden it, after which you can salt it and age it for longer preservation and more distinct flavour.
Of utmost importance throughout the process is to maintain a high standard of hygiene, as one is using warm milk, which is especially susceptible to spoiling through bacterial infection. So, while you can make cheese even in your home kitchen, do ensure that the place is clean and you do not prepare any other food through the course of the cheese-making process, to prevent accidental infection.
The exact procedure for the different cheese varies and easy-to-follow guidelines can be found in any good recipe book, or even online.  
The basic equipment that you would require for cheese-making are: a kitchen thermometer, a few yards of cheese-cloth (coarse for draining the curds and a finer one for draining softer cheeses), a draining basket, a cheese press, and sometimes moulds for particular varieties.
So go ahead try this at home and surprise people with your cheese making skills.

Related posts:

1. Mt. Sterling Goat Milk Feta – Four 7 oz. Packages
2. Get Your Goat Cheese Collection – Zabar’s Cheese Plate of the Week
3. Mt. Sterling Raw Goat Milk Cheddar Cheese – Four 8 oz. Packages
4. Raw Goat Milk Cheddar Cheese by Wisconsin Cheese Mart
5. Manufacturing of cheddar cheese