Cheese is awesome. I know that it doesn’t really have anything to do with gardening, but I still felt like posting this anyway. This is the first time we tried making cheese and it was actually pretty easy. It turned out well and was good on crackers. This definitely turned out more as a snack cheese rather than a sandwich cheese though.
We used a liter of whole milk and a liter of buttermilk. After sterilizing the pan, the milk is heated to about 300 C. The rennet gets added at this point. Rennet is the stuff that causes curds and whey to separate. Usually its taken from the stomach lining of a calf. I’ve got microbial rennet in powder form, which seems to work just as well. One half teaspoon mixed in 10 ml of salt water beforehand was enough.
After the curds are split you can drain the whey out through cheesecloth. We made a small press out of a few cans to get a round shape and make the cheese denser. There are also some herbs and salt added before we put it into the press to add flavor. We pressed it for a couple hours and put it in a salt bath overnight for a stronger taste.
So this is the result. Tasted good. I know I said it isn't really a cheese for bread, but here's a picture with some homemade bread anyway. There’s loads of information online about making different cheeses. This was very simple. There are also methods of washing the curds and aging for weeks or months to get harder cheeses. If I have some time I’m going to try to make some ‘real’ cheese, like gouda or something.
We used a liter of whole milk and a liter of buttermilk. After sterilizing the pan, the milk is heated to about 300 C. The rennet gets added at this point. Rennet is the stuff that causes curds and whey to separate. Usually its taken from the stomach lining of a calf. I’ve got microbial rennet in powder form, which seems to work just as well. One half teaspoon mixed in 10 ml of salt water beforehand was enough.
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| Curds and whey |
So this is the result. Tasted good. I know I said it isn't really a cheese for bread, but here's a picture with some homemade bread anyway. There’s loads of information online about making different cheeses. This was very simple. There are also methods of washing the curds and aging for weeks or months to get harder cheeses. If I have some time I’m going to try to make some ‘real’ cheese, like gouda or something.
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