Cheese

[PotterWatch]

I am planning on making my first hard cheese tomorrw. I am trying to decide between colby, monterey jack, and farmhouse cheddar. Anyone have any tips for cheesemaking in general? I'm a little concerned about how to keep the temperature steady for fairly long periods of time and how to increase the temp as slowly as it says to in the recipes. I also don't have a press so I will have to improvise that part. When it says to press with one pound of pressure, I'm assuming that means I could use anything that is one pound as long as it provides even pressure over the whole cheese, right?

 

[PotterWatch]

Another question, after I add the rennet and stir it in as directed, it says to let the milk set until the curd shows a clean break. Do I turn the heat off during this time or continue to maintain the temp I brought the milk up to before adding the rennet?

 

[Kim_NC]

I'm only a beginner cheese maker. However, there's a great thread on cheese at Sufficient Self (sister site). A read through the posts will help with lots of ideas. And I'm sure someone there can answer your questions.:

http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=5937

 

[patandchickens]

Totally depends on what you mean by those three cheeses. Cheese recipes in books etc are usually (IMO) rather arbitrarily named, often by process of free-association rather than actual identity. So it is hard to say which recipe is more foolproof without knowing what the recipes *involve*, you know?

That said, most recipes labelled "farmhouse cheddar" are pretty bare-minimum, straightforward, and produce something dry enough not to fail dreadfully due to internal souring, so that might be the way to go.

Actually the first successful hard cheese I made was the buttermilk-cultured "basic hard cheese" from David Fankhauser's website, and while it tasted distressingly buttermilklike at first, after a month or two it tasted quite *good*, and made killer mac-n-cheese too, if grated fine (doesn't melt well for me). So that is another option. Only thing is you have to translate renneting instructions because he calls for junket rennet tablets and you presumably have *real* rennet; but that's not a big deal.

I'm a little concerned about how to keep the temperature steady for fairly long periods of time and how to increase the temp as slowly as it says to in the recipes.

If you have a good big sink, put the cheese pot into the sink (with the plug in so water doesn't drain out), then adjust temp by adding more hot water to sink as needed. You can hand-bail some out if the sink starts getting too full and cheese pot starts floating.

Lacking a good big sink, I put the cheese pot inside a lidless waterbath canner (up on a cake rack or some canning rings) and put warm water into the canner up to the same level as the milk in the cheese pot. To raise temperature, I have screwed up enough batches that now I have a reasonable idea how to utilize the stove burner to get the desired effect (especially, when to turn it off so it doesn't overshoot!), plus you can also add a bit of very hot tapwater to the canner to get it initially started warming.

The main thing is that you have to be THERE and be LOOKING AT IT FREQUENTLY, without fiddling with the curd in undesirable ways.

I also don't have a press so I will have to improvise that part. When it says to press with one pound of pressure, I'm assuming that means I could use anything that is one pound as long as it provides even pressure over the whole cheese, right?

Yes.

For higher pressures I recommend the lever-style old fashioned presses that you can easily make yourself, either freestanding or attached to a wall. I believe there is a diagram (you can figure out how to MAKE it, it's simple) in Ricki Carroll's book [which I am not real impressed with btw, there are other books I've found more useful, but hers is pretty ubiquitous], or google.

Whatever you rig up, you will have to fool with it a fair bit at least the first few times you use it, because it will keep wanting to slip off to the side. This is somewhat true of a 1-lb can, and much MORE true of anything HEAVIER (be it direct pressure or lever style). It is not just that it gives you a crooked cheese that ages unevenly, it will actually tend to fall over and dump whey and all that all over your kitchen floor. So keep a close eye on it, esp. the first few times.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat, sort of an "advanced beginner" in cheesemaking, emphasis on the beginner part