If you wake up tomorrow and decide to become a cheesemaker (and this happens more often than you might think), here is a general sense of what you’d need to get started:
Learn about animals.
At its most basic, cheese is fresh milk that’s been curdled, drained, pressed, and usually aged. The key ingredient, my friend, is milk—really good milk. So, what breed are you going to select for your fields? Let’s say you want to make a Brie-style cheese. Are you going to use Jersey milk? Jersey cows are small and friendly, and they’re known for their rich, buttery milk. Then again, Holsteins are good producers, and Ayrshires have gained favor in Vermont. Looks like you better taste some cheeses made from different breeds. Or maybe you should just go to France, the seat of bloomy cheese, and gaze across the Parisian basin for divine inspiration.
Figure out what to feed them.
Once you’ve determined which animals are best for your style of cheese, you’ll need to plant crops. You’ve probably heard that pasture-raised cows make the best burger. Well, they also produce some of the best cheese. You can opt for corn silage, which is the cheapest way to bulk up your girls (you do know that only heifers give milk, right?), but if you want to produce extraordinary cheese, you’ll want to let them loose on the range. As you drink their milk, you’ll notice that the flavor changes through the seasons. In spring, it’s floral from tender greens and wild-flowers; in fall, it’s nuttier from winter grasses.
Set up a “make room.”
Now that you’re milking twice a day, it’s time to get a curd vat, which looks like a giant cauldron. You’ll also need to get a pasteurizer if you’re making young cheese, like Brie. While you’re at it, order some good rubber boots, a bunch of cheese forms to create uniform wheels, some rennet (a coagulant), and plenty of starter culture. You’re now in the fermentation business. Make sure you’ve got your license. Now you can begin making cheese—pull out your recipe and get ready to stir.
Cheese is made from three basic ingredients: fresh milk, rennet, and microbes that acidify and flavor the milk. Traditionally, rennet was extracted from the stomach lining of an animal. Today, most cheesemakers buy synthetic rennet in tablet or liquid form, but the hardcore still use the traditional stuff.
Once you’re ready to age your cheese, you’ll need to find an affineur—someone who trained in cheese maturation—to handle the ageing of your wheels, or you can build a cheese cave and teach yourself. Caves don’t have to be built from stone. Some are just temperature-controlled rooms with carefully maintained humidity. Make sure you’ve got shelves that allow plenty of air to circulate. Fresh cheeses, like ricotta and mozzarella, don’t undergo any ageing at all, while hard cheeses like Cheddar or Pecorino can be aged for years. During ageing, cheeses don’t just sit in a cave developing lovely personalities. They require daily attention. On a small farm, cheesemakers handle this themselves. At a big operation, affineurs move about like nurses, often in white smocks, caring for the cheese. Some wheels need baths to keep them moist, while others require daily flipping or rubbing to achieve particular flavors and textures. The process can be very labor-intensive.
Now you just need to hang out and make sure your little beauties ripen properly. You may want to rub them every day so that the mold on the surface doesn’t grow too wild.
Find a market.
When you and your cheese are ready for a grand debut, you can buy a card table and set up at a farmers’ market, or you can arrange to meet with some local cheesemongers for a tasting. If they like what you’ve got, you’re in business. Now, all you have to do is head home to keep milking cows twice a day and planting fields and making cheese and nursing the wheels in the cave. Somehow, you’ll manage to sleep.