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Cheesemaking and Dairying
An extract from the book by Katie Thear
published by Broad Leys Publishing Ltd
There is very good cheese as well as bad made in Suffolk.
(Thomas Tusser. Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry. 1557)
Step-by-Step Soft Cheese
If
you are making cheeses for the first time, don’t expect to save money
by making your own, unless you have your own milk supply and are doing it
on a fairly large scale. To make half a kilo of cheese, for example, will
need around four litres of milk.
The second piece of advice is to start
with a soft cheese and gain experience with that technique before going
on to hard cheese production.
Thirdly, use a commercial starter and rennet,
for the results will be more reliable and consistent.
Finally, do keep a
record of all your cheesemaking activities in a Cheese Log Book (an ordinary
hardback notebook will do). In this way it is possible to reproduce a particularly
good cheese again, as well as avoiding faults that may have shown up the
first time.
IMAGE: A two-piece stainless steel Coulommier cheese mould.
Every soft cheese is different and the production methods will vary depending on the recipe. The simplest is a pot cheese.
Pot cheese
- 2.5 litres milk
- 10ml (2 teaspoons) liquid starter or a little DVI starter
- 2 drops rennet
- Salt and flavourings to taste
Pasteurise the milk by heating to 66°C for 30 minutes, then allow to cool to 30°C. Check the temperatures with a dairy thermometer. Add the starter and stir in well. Cover the pan and leave in a warm place for half an hour. Mix the rennet with two teaspoonfuls of previously boiled and cooled water, then stir into the milk. Cover the pan and leave in a warm place until the milk has set into a curd.
Drain off as much of the liquid whey as possible, then ladle the curd into a cheese cloth placed in a colander. Make the cloth into a bag and hang up to drain for around 24 hours. Once the whey has drained away, scrape the curd from the cloth and place in a dish. Add salt, pepper or other flavour, as desired, and store in the refrigerator until eaten. It will keep for around five days.
Coulommier Cheese
Coulommier is a soft cheese from France that is produced in a mould rather than in a draining cloth. Purpose-made, stainless steel, Coulommier moulds are available. Two plastic, open-ended moulds can also be used, one on top of another. Masking tape can then be used to hold these together until the two halves are separated. When my grandchildren want to make cheese with me, this is the recipe I use.
- 3 litres milk
- 5ml liquid starter or a little DVI
- 3 drops rennet
To pasteurise the milk, heat it to 66°C. Cool to 30°C if you are using cows’ milk. For goats’ or ewes’ milk, reduce the temperature to 28OC. Add the starter and stir in thoroughly. Cover and leave in a warm place for 30 minutes. Add the rennet which has been diluted in four times its volume of previously boiled and cooled water. Stir and leave until the curd is firm and does not leave a milky stain on the back of your finger.
Meanwhile, sterilise the cheese mats and moulds with boiling water and place them on the tray. When the curd is set, ladle it gently into the mould until it is full. Cover and leave in a warm place until the curd has sunk to below the collar mark where the two halves of the mould interlock, then remove the top half.
The shrinking will take several hours and during this time keep the mould covered with the second mat. The curd firms as it shrinks, and as soon as it is firm enough, turn the cheese onto the second mat.
By the following day, the curd should have shrunk to half way down the mould and will be firm enough to remove from the mould.
Sprinkle it with salt and place it in the refrigerator for a few hours to cool. At this stage, it is ready to eat or it can be allowed to ripen for up to three days so that it develops more flavour.
If necessary, it can be flavoured with crushed garlic, black pepper, parsley or other herbs. If you’re feeling in a celebratory mood, the traditional wine to drink with a Coulommier cheese is Nuits St. George (but not for the grandchildren!)
© 2004. Katie Thear.
This is an extract from the book Cheesemaking and Dairying by Katie Thear, published by Broad Leys Publishing Ltd. It covers all aspects of soft, hard and inoculated cheese-making, as well as yoghurt, ice cream, cream and butter. It is fully illustrated with step-by-step photographic sequences.
CHEESEMAKING AND DAIRYING - £7.95 |
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