GETTING STARTED

 

Rennet

For most of the history of the world, cheeses were made with only two or three ingredients: milk, acid (kefir or vinegar), and rennet. Milk and acid can be used to make soft cheeses. Adding rennet is necessary to make hard cheeses. Rennet is a group of enzymes (proteins) that occur naturally in some animals, plants, and fungi.

Until recent decades, all rennet for hard cheeses came from the lining of the fourth stomach of a calf, called the abomasum, where the enzyme chymosin is naturally found. This coagulating enzyme allows the calf to digest its mother’s milk by turning the milk into cheese curd. (Human babies also naturally turn milk into curd, which every parent has seen in the form of spit-up). Throughout most of history, the calf’s fourth stomach was cleaned and dried so that a small piece could be used as needed to coagulate milk into hard cheese. A dried, salt-cured calf abomasum, called a vell, was generally available for sale in the United States even through the 1960s. In recent decades, technology has allowed companies to manufacture genetically modified (GMO) bacteria, which produce this rennet instead.

Today, the natural calf source of rennet is considered too expensive for commercial use. Most commercially sold hard cheeses in the United States, like cheddar, are made with rennet produced from genetically modified bacteria, called Fermentation-Produced Chymosin (FPC), the first-ever genetically modified food product for humans approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Despite rennet coming from GMO bacteria, US law does not require cheese to be labeled as GMO, even when consumers directly inquire. This is because the bacteria that produce the rennet are genetically altered, not the actual ingredient, rennet, the bacteria produce. This allows manufacturers to legally claim that their cheese includes no GMO ingredients. In my view, this is all a shameful dance of semantics, a deliberate effort to keep consumers from knowing the origin of food.

Despite searching long and hard, I have not been able to find any vells for sale anywhere in the United States. I have not even been able to find a butcher who could sell me an abomasum so I could make my own vell. Sadly, we have given up the natural way of cheesemaking used for thousands of years.

If you, like me, are opposed to genetically modified foods and prefer to use natural ingredients, WalcoRen is the only rennet I have been able to find that guarantees in writing it is 100 percent natural, non GMO, with no microbe manufacturing. These rennet tablets are preservative-free, with no GMO ingredients, containing only salt and natural chymosin (calf rennet powder). You can buy rennet tablets at my website, SeedRenaissance.com.

 

Using Rennet to Make Cheese

In the first section of this book, you will find recipes for cheese using commercial rennets, like the Seed Renaissance tablets mentioned above. One tablet makes eight cheeses using the 3/4-gallon milk recipe found later in this book. The tablets are broken into one-eighth pieces and refrigerated until needed. Before making cheese, the tablet portion is gently crushed with the back of a spoon and dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water for 10 to 15 minutes or can be left uncrushed and dissolved overnight. Rennet tablets typically have a shelf life of between six months and a year. I recommend that you write the date on the rennet package when you receive it so that you know how long you have had the rennet. For people who make cheese only as a hobby, expired rennet is one of the primary causes of failed cheese batches. Making sure you have dated your rennet prevents this problem.

 

Vegetarian Rennet

Vegetarian rennet is commercially made from a mold called Mucor miehei. Unfortunately, most experienced cheesemakers say this rennet does not work as well as animal rennet (or FPC) and may add a bitter flavor to aged cheeses. Most vegetarian rennets are also made today from GMO bacteria because it is cheaper than extracting rennet enzymes from the mold.

There are also some plants that can produce either rennet enzymes or acid strong enough to coagulate milk, allowing the milk to separate into curds and whey. In the second section of this book are recipes using all-natural, self-reliant backyard rennets.

 

Romano and Parmesan

I have included recipes for both “Romano-type” and “Parmesan-type” dry cheeses. Why not just call them “Romano” and “Parmesan”? Because according to US law, cheeses labeled as Romano must be aged at least five months in a cheese cave (or similar) environment. The term Pecorino Romano is a legally protected term for a cheese crafted in Italy. Cheeses labeled as Parmesan in the United States are legally required to be similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano, which is also a legally protected term for an Italian aged cheese. Neither of the cheeses in this book can legally be labeled Parmesan or Romano. Most home cooks cannot safely age real Parmesan or Romano. The recipes in this book produce cheeses of a type and flavor that I find to be similar.

 

Reusable Cheesecloth

Historically, muslin fabric was used to strain whey from cheese curd, but today, reusable cheesecloths are preferred because they are washable and can be used to make thousands of batches of cheese without staining, odors, or discoloration, when treated properly. Reusable cheesecloths are both hand and machine washable and wash easily and quickly in cold or warm water. Reusable cheesecloths are available in the cheesemaking section of SeedRenaissance.com, where you can also find all-natural cheese rennet and seeds for backyard rennet plants.

 

Pressing Cheese

Pressing cheese for a short time is necessary to make most cheeses that are hard enough to be grated. (Mozzarella is the exception; it is made grateable through the process of kneading and stretching.) You can purchase cheese presses online or in specialty stores, but unless they are solid stainless steel, they are not likely to be strong enough to be long lasting. While solid stainless steel presses cost, at this writing, a couple hundred dollars, they can be a good investment. My wife and I still have her grandmother’s cheese press. The good news is, for the recipes in this book, purchasing a cheese press is not necessary! You can create a makeshift press easily. Even though we have a “real” cheese press, the method I outline below is the one I usually use to press my cheese, because digging the actual cheese press out of the pantry, setting it up, and then washing it afterward takes longer than this makeshift method.