This page contains a short introduction to making cheese at
home.
A little introduction.
I owe all I know to various people form it.hobby.cucina, in particular
Faromagio
(www.faromagio.it).
Also, there are a few books around on
cheesemaking, the last one I read is "Cheesecraft: A Manual for
Cheesemaking" by Rita Ash and Susan Cutting (mainly on English
cheese), but you can find many others around. All the "scientific"
information you can find here comes from discussion on
it.hobby.cucina (especially with Marilus), or form other sources,
such as Professor
Fankhauser pages on cheese.
What is cheese?As you know, you cannot keep milk for more
than a few days, especially if it is untreated: you can imagine
cheese as a way to preserve the nutrients of milk for longer. You
can think of cheese as the "solid" version of milk. If you are
interested in the composition of
milk, have
a look at this page. Milk can go through a number of steps
before it is converted into cheese: for instance, remove cream to
make butter, then make cheese, then make ricotta. In this page I
take a simpler approach and I start from whole milk to make cheese.
Essentially, there are two ways to obtain a kind-of-solid product
from milk:
Acid coagulation: the proteins of milk (casein) are
soluble for moderate values of pH, but they are insoluble in an
acid solution. So, if you manage to make the milk acid, casein
tends to "fall" (precipitate) and separate from the liquid
component: this is what happens for yogurt and other kinds of
cheese (like paneer, labneh, mascarpone, ricotta, etc.). Also, if
you leave yogurt in the fridge, you'll notice that it tends to
separate further. Milk becomes acid by fermentation:
appropriate bacteria are inoculated in milk and they convert the
sugar of the milk (the lactose) into lactic acid, thus making the
solution acid. This is what you do when you want to make yogurt:
you add appropriate bacteria (such as lactobaciullus termophilus,
acidophilus, bulgaricus: read the label of any yogurt on the
market), they "eat" the sugar (lactose) and they produce lactic
acid. These bacteria are particularly active at around 36C, and
this is the reason you need a constant temperature to make yogurt
in a reasonable time.
Rennet: the proteins of milk can coagulate even in a
non-acid solution, if an appropriate enzyme is present. The name
of this enzyme is chymosine, aka rennet. A
scientific explanation of what happens when rennet is added to
milk can
be found here (in the paragraph starting with "In order to
understand how chymosin coagulates milk,..."). For the purposes
of this page, it is sufficient to know that rennet modifies
casein in such a way that casein coagulates. The solid part of
the coagulation is called the curd, and the liquid part is
called the whey. Some people call cheese only the
product of coagulation of milk with rennet. In any case,
coagulation with rennet is the starting point of the majority of
cheeses. The common steps to make cheese in this way are listed below
Let's make cheese, finally! This is the procedure
for nearly all cheeses made with rennet, the different
parameters to obtain different cheeses are explained later.
The main ingredients: milk and rennet. The problem
is that the milk you can buy in supermarkets has been
heavily processed. It is usually pasteurised
(meaning that all the bacteria has been eliminated via
pasteurisation) and homogenised (meaning that the
milk has been pumped through a small hole at a high
pressure, to omogenise its consistency and colour, and
the fat content has been normalized to something around
3.5%). Especially the homogenisation process is a
problem for the coagulation using rennet. Therefore, you
should look for unhomogenised milk if possible. I
can find unhomogenised and pasteurised milk in
Sainsbury's supermarket in the UK, and raw milk in most
farmers markets.
Rennet might be a problem: I can easily find vegetable rennet
in the UK, and I can find standard animal rennet in
Italy (from "consorzi agrari" and "farmacie"). You can
find solid rennet in the US.
These are my ingredients:
The tools: it easy to make a big mess when making
cheese, especially the first times... So, get ready with
appropriate tools. You need strainers, a few of
them. You probably need 2 litres in volume of strainers
for around 4 liters of milk (after draining the final
volume will reduce to less than 1 liter). I make my own
strainers out of plastic milk containers or other light
plastic boxes. You can also buy strainers for cheese on
the web, or you can look for them from cheesemakers
close to you. Avoid wooden strainers or the cheese will
taste like wood... These are my strainers: homemade on the
back and donated from a cheesemaker in front.
Let's start: place 3 liters of milk in a large pan
and bring it to 36C slowly (or it will stick to
the bottom):
If the milk was pasteursied, you'll need to add
active bacteria to develop the taste of cheese. You can
buy bacteria from the web, or cultivate them from a
cheese you like. Essentially, the curd is a bed
for the growth of bacteria; this is what makes each
cheese different (apart from the milk!). I use Total
Fage greek yogurt (3 spoons) to make soft cheeses like
crescenza. Add some milk to the yogurt and stir well,
then add the yogurt to the milk, before warming the
milk:
While the milk warms up, dilute the rennet with
water. Follows the instructions for the dose. You
typically need only a few drops of rennet. For 1:10000
animal rennet, you need 1g of rennet to coagulate 10000
grams of milk (10 litres) at 36C in 40 minutes, but even
if you use 2g it's not going to hurt... In these
pictures I used vegetable rennet, a bit less powerful:
Add the rennet to the milk, cover the pan with a lid
and keep the pan in a warm, draft-free place, for around
40 minutes. The curd should form, you can check if the
curd is ready using a toothpick: it should remain
vertical if you place it in the curd (the whey is on the
bottom of the pan):
At this point the curd is ready to be cut. Use a
long knife or some other long object (it doesn't need to
be very sharp)
Keep cutting in perpendicular cuts, in cubes more or
less 3cm each side:
The size of the cut is one of the parameters that
affect the final result. For crescenza, 3cm cubes is
what you need. For dry cheeses, you need smaller
cuts. In this case I want to make a simple caciotta-like
cheese, so I cut the curd further to the size of corn
grains:
Leave the cut curd to rest for 15 minutes or so,
then start removing it and place it in the strainers
(this is a tricky point, do this operation close to
the sink):
Notice: if you keep the whey you'll be able to make
ricotta (see later on).
Leave the curd to drain, you will see it reduces its
volume considerably:
After a couple of hours or so, you can turn the
strainer upside down, with the help of another strainer:
From now on, you can turn the cheese upside down
once in a while, usually once a day, for the next two to
three weeks. In the first three days, spread some salt
on the top surface (another technique to salt the cheese
would be to soak the cheese in 1l of water with 130g of
salt for around 1 hour). After three weeks you should
obtain something similar to this (the bread on the left
is homemade, see this link
for Homemade
bread recipes):
How to make crescenza: Crescenza (aka stracchino
in some Italian regions) is a soft, creamy cheese, with high
water content. Follow the procedure as above, but cut the
curd in 3cm cubes, not less. Strain the crescenza and try to
keep the humidity as high as possible (for instance by
covering the strainer with cling film), and salt the surface
every day (you can obtain a better result if you soak the
crescenza on salted water the first day). Crescenza is ready
after 5 days more or less, it should be creamy and slightly
acid (acidophilus is the kind of bacteria you need). If you
wait two days only and you do not soak the curd in water but
only sprinkle salt on top, you'll obtain the so-called primo
sale. Crescenza is typically square, so use a square
strainer if possible.
Homemade cheese and cheesemaking
This page contains a short introduction to making cheese at home.
A little introduction.
I owe all I know to various people form it.hobby.cucina, in particular Faromagio (www.faromagio.it). Also, there are a few books around on cheesemaking, the last one I read is "Cheesecraft: A Manual for Cheesemaking" by Rita Ash and Susan Cutting (mainly on English cheese), but you can find many others around. All the "scientific" information you can find here comes from discussion on it.hobby.cucina (especially with Marilus), or form other sources, such as Professor Fankhauser pages on cheese.
What is cheese?As you know, you cannot keep milk for more than a few days, especially if it is untreated: you can imagine cheese as a way to preserve the nutrients of milk for longer. You can think of cheese as the "solid" version of milk. If you are interested in the composition of milk, have a look at this page. Milk can go through a number of steps before it is converted into cheese: for instance, remove cream to make butter, then make cheese, then make ricotta. In this page I take a simpler approach and I start from whole milk to make cheese.
Essentially, there are two ways to obtain a kind-of-solid product from milk:
Milk becomes acid by fermentation: appropriate bacteria are inoculated in milk and they convert the sugar of the milk (the lactose) into lactic acid, thus making the solution acid. This is what you do when you want to make yogurt: you add appropriate bacteria (such as lactobaciullus termophilus, acidophilus, bulgaricus: read the label of any yogurt on the market), they "eat" the sugar (lactose) and they produce lactic acid. These bacteria are particularly active at around 36C, and this is the reason you need a constant temperature to make yogurt in a reasonable time.
Let's make cheese, finally! This is the procedure for nearly all cheeses made with rennet, the different parameters to obtain different cheeses are explained later.
Rennet might be a problem: I can easily find vegetable rennet in the UK, and I can find standard animal rennet in Italy (from "consorzi agrari" and "farmacie"). You can find solid rennet in the US. These are my ingredients:
How to make crescenza: Crescenza (aka stracchino in some Italian regions) is a soft, creamy cheese, with high water content. Follow the procedure as above, but cut the curd in 3cm cubes, not less. Strain the crescenza and try to keep the humidity as high as possible (for instance by covering the strainer with cling film), and salt the surface every day (you can obtain a better result if you soak the crescenza on salted water the first day). Crescenza is ready after 5 days more or less, it should be creamy and slightly acid (acidophilus is the kind of bacteria you need). If you wait two days only and you do not soak the curd in water but only sprinkle salt on top, you'll obtain the so-called primo sale. Crescenza is typically square, so use a square strainer if possible.
How to make ricotta: Coming soon! :-)