https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/recipe/cheese-recipes/30-minute-mozzarella-cheese/
Now the hard stuff. Here is the hard cheese recipe I use. It uses yogurt for a thermophilic culture.
https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/recipe/cheese-recipes/homestead-yogurt-cultured-hard-cheese/
It takes less time than cheddar and I have gotten several nice cheeses with it. Tips.
1. DO buy a plastic BPA-free mold with follower. The follower compresses the curds; the mold should have holes or something to let out the remaining whey.
If you are only going to process one gallon of milk per batch, buy several. You will want to put the follower of one that you don't need at the moment, on top of the follower on top of the cheese, and then put weight on top of that to press the cheese. I was in this position because I used a gallon pot for warming the milk. If you have or can buy a larger pot, you'll get a bigger cheese out of each batch.
Here is a cheese fresh out of the mold starting to dry.
2. Be patient after you add the rennet. The recipe doesn't say this (a different recipe does, see below), but it takes up to an hour for the rennet to do its job.
3. Tap water is good for the bath. You should set it on the warm burner where you warmed the milk, but turn the burner OFF. Yes, it will cool, but not enough to jeopardize the curding.
4. Don't forget the vinegar wipe. This retards growth of mold.
5. A little chemistry. The wax you use, if you are going to age the cheese a long time, is a hydrocarbon. So is the butter you spread on this cheese during the initial aging period. They do the same thing but it's easier to get the butter off when you go to eat that first cheese because you can't stand to wait any longer.
I used some of one of my first cheeses in an omelet when it had aged a couple of weeks. Not bad. It will age some more & I'll try it again.
Here is a cheddar cheese recipe. I bought annatto especially for this, so I would know which was which. You can use cultured buttermilk for mesophilic cultures; use the same amount as you used yogurt for the hard cheese.
https://www.culturesforhealth.com/learn/recipe/cheese-recipes/cheddar-cheese-recipe/
I made several batches of this without buying a press and I used stuff I had around the house, added up to get the right weight. The cheddaring means that getting into press takes longer with more intervention, and the press needs to stay on longer.
I bought cultures and made yogurt and buttermilk to use for cheesing. You can also use the buttermilk to make sour cream and cream cheese. My first two tries at cream cheese were a bust so I will have to go to a store near me that sells Trickling Spring lightly pasteurized half and half. The heavy and light cream and half an half in your store are probably ultra-pasteurized and all the recipes say DON'T USE THAT. So my first sour cream was nice and firm but didn't have much flavor.
Don't use store-bought yogurt as a culture unless you check the ingredients for food starch and pectin. I was going to use Dannon for this but they had started adding food starch one year, after adding pectin the year before. Another manufacturer putting profit ahead of food quality. The culture I bought to make yogurt with tells you how to make sure it's thick, if that's what you want. But the mfg doesn't have time to waste on doing things right.
Now you know I don't DIY if there's nothing in it for me but there is. This link gives the ingredients of Kraft American cheese.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/16/kraft-singles-kids-eat-right_n_6879658.html
Notice the gelatin. If you keep halal or kosher, you need a guarantee from Kraft that they ONLY use plant gelatin. If they won't commit to that, you can't eat this cheese because some gelatin still comes from animals, and you can't be sure the animals qualify for halal or kosher.
Some of the other stuff goes under "can I buy this on the shelves of the grocery where I buy the cheese" and the answer is "no". It's additives meant to preserve the product or make it cheaper to manufacture. But cheese freezes well for up to a year and if you make sure to thaw it in the fridge it won't come out crumbly.
The down side to making your own cheese is, as I said, that YOU MUST COMMIT to keeping your instruments/utensils scrupulously clean. You cannot use chlorine, this is not about disinfecting and anyway, as you know, the recipes assume some mold will grow in or on the cheese. You should not use detergents, especially those that are bad for the environment. This is where my switch to all-Castile soap has been a benefit, BUT I must wipe the pot and things down with vinegar and towel them off to remove the salts.
That said, as long as you get the temperature of the milk TO the right value before adding cultures or rennet, and you don't stray too high when using a mesophilic culture, cheese is pretty forgiving.
And pretty tasty.
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
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