Making Cheese BASICS
It is important you enjoy cheese. You will find millions of recipes on the internet about how to make cheese. They never agree from one person to the next. The temperatures are always different, the quantities vary and the methods vary too. Some people get all hung up about one particular method, others are quite different. The point is there are many ways of making cheese, and they are all probably equally valid!
This is because there are a number of ways the mammal keeps milk from going lumpy in the milk store, udder, breast or whatever you want to call it. As it is, milk is a miracle food, and therefore, so is cheese, and even more of a miracle is the protein casein, which is what cheese making is all about.
The protein casein naturally wants to stick together and this would be disastrous for the mother trying to feed its young. So we have a number of ways to counter this natural cheese making ability. Alkalinity is one of them. If milk is acidified, you get cheese. Enzymes stop cheese making, so take out these enzymes and you get cheese!
With this in mind, cheesemaking is easy! It works almost by itself! But there are some important steps we need to follow.
Cleanliness
It should go without saying that rigorous cleanliness of the cheese making area, the utensils and everything coming in contact with the milk, the cheese in all its stages of production and ourselves, is of utmost importance. This is for two reasons. Firstly, cheese is an ideal growing medium for bacteria (we want some good bacteria in our cheese) and so, if we are not careful, unwanted bacteria will grow in the milk and cheese, giving the product a bad flavour or even could be dangerous to eat.
Secondly, many microbes are not dangerous but simply spoil the flavour of the cheese, or its consistency. So cleanliness is best.
A series on the basics of cheese making with the minimal amount of equipment