cheese

[harðfiskur]

Anybody making cheese out there? I did a little experiment (3 pints milk) using lemon as curdling agent and it did work...

[Green Aura]

I've made several cheeses - labneh (strained yoghurt cheese), ricotta, halloumi and a hard cheese.

Labneh is the easiest and I make it with kefir, rather than yoghurt, because I always have some on the go - it makes it more tangy than yoghurt cheese but I love it, flavoured with a little salt and chives or whatever herbs take my fancy.

Halloumi is pretty easy too, but I've only managed to buy sheeps' milk once so I've only made it the once. I've had a couple of goes at the hard cheese but to be honest it isn't worth the effort unless you have a ready supply of cheap milk as you get very little return and lots of whey. Ricotta's fairly easy though, made after I made the hard cheese, just added an extra pint of milk to the whey and recooked it - oh, I tried making gjetost with the whey but burnt it after hours of cooking, for nothing.

I also make a vegan fermented cheese made from cashew nuts for my daughter, though we all enjoy it - it's very tasty.

[doofaloofa]

Blessed are the cheese makers

[harðfiskur]

Do you find that the different variety of milk decides the taste or is it more the length of the seasoning?

[Green Aura]

At this point I just follow recipes and use whatever milk I can get hold of as cheaply as possible so I couldn't really advise on that.

But, as a very experienced cheese eater, I'd say it must, otherwise you wouldn't have all these different types of cheese. Even different types of supposedly the same cheese e.g. cheddar, taste different depending on where they're made.

[doofaloofa]

Whilst the type of milk probably make a difference to the flavour, and what the animals ate can effect the flavour of the milk, AFAIK it is the bacterial culture that make the difference between cheese varieties

[BernardSmith]

Apologies for resurrecting this thread but I have been making cheese only since May and get about 1/2 kg (1 lb ) of hard cheese from a gallon of milk (about 4L), whether raw or store bought, whether pasteurized or acquired from colleagues. Not a huge amount but certainly not an amount to be dismissed as insignificant. Eight liters will produce 1 kg (about 2 lbs). If you get less that may be because you are not allowing the milk to coagulate sufficiently (often about 50 minutes to an hour after you add the rennet) and if cut the curds into too small cubes or press with too much weight too quickly you will end up losing milk protein into the whey