Cheese: Ingredients and Equipment
Protein is an essential part of the human diet. Though vegetable sources can provide protein, in most cases the protein lacks crucial amino acids. The most readily available complete proteins are meats, eggs, and dairy; the latter two are the least expensive. Continuing the theme of preserving nutritive content through fermentation, we arrive at cheese. Milk contains a lot of complete protein, but it is also highly perishable.
In the ages before refrigeration was reliably available, one of the few ways to make the nutritional value of milk last longer while also making it quite portable was turning it into cheese. Hard cheeses in particular, if waxed, can last for years.
Another advantage of cheese is that many hard cheeses lack lactose. Lactose is a sugar in milk that many folks (including myself!) cannot digest. As a result, if they consume most milk products they will suffer severe gastrointestinal distress—sometimes for days. When the whey and curd are separated in the first phases of making cheese, 94% of the lactose stays in the whey. Most aged cheeses lack lactose and as a result provide lactose-intolerant people with a delicious way of obtaining the nutritional benefits of milk.
Cheese also has its own health benefits. It is rich in cancer-preventing conjugated linoleic acid and sphingolipids, fights tooth decay, and helps maintain bone strength.
Like beer making, cheese making is both art and science. If anything, there is even more art to making cheese because it requires practice to master the various steps. So this chapter is enough to get you started, but you’ll likely want to branch out once you’ve mastered the techniques covered here.
What is Cheese?
Cheese is the coagulated fat and protein from the milk of domesticated dairy animals. The fats and proteins of milk are coagulated in various ways for the manufacture of different types of cheese. In some cases, a bacterial culture is added. The bacterial culture consumes lactose to make lactic acid; this lactic acid causes the coagulation.
In other cases, rennet is added. Rennet is a complex mixture of enzymes that likewise coagulates milk. In yet other cases, an acid such as citric acid, tartaric acid, or even vinegar is used to cause coagulation. Though the products of these various methods of coagulation are markedly different, they are all cheese because they have in common the coagulation of milk.
In the United States, cows are the usual source for milk; goats are utilized to a lesser extent. In other countries, the milk of bison, buffalo, sheep, horses, yaks, and other animals are also used. The nature of the milk of different species varies appreciably and this is reflected in the character of the cheese produced. Theoretically, you could make cheese using the milk of any mammal; I wouldn’t attempt this until you get good at making cheese from well-characterized herbivores such as cows and goats. Not only that, trying to milk a tiger or a bear is probably more dangerous than warranted.
Likewise, the components of the milk will vary between different breeds of dairy cattle. Even the milk of a particular cow will vary with season and diet. Probably the most striking example of this was in the cream cheese my grandmother would make from cows that had been eating wild onions. The smell and taste of the wild onions was transferred to the milk and hence to the cheese. In the case of cream cheese, the results were delicious!
Most organic milk is ultra-pasteurized, making it unsuitable for cheese.
It is important to know that though pasteurized milk is fine for making cheese, the ultra-pasteurized milk that you find in the store is unsuitable. This is unfortunate, because it is the organic brands that tend to be ultra-pasteurized. Ultra-pasteurization is used to extend the shelf-life of expensive milk that doesn’t sell very quickly. Unfortunately, that process damages the protein in milk so extensively that it is unsuitable for making cheese.
Milk from other animals can certainly be made into cheese, but doing so would require changes in timing, temperature, quantities of ingredients, and so forth that are simply too extensive to be treated in a single chapter.
So we are going to use pasteurized, homogenized cow’s milk from the grocery store as the learning medium for your first forays into cheese making. After you have mastered these skills, you can branch out from there. You can find specific types of milk suitable for your needs by finding a local dairy at www.smalldairy.com.
About Raw Milk
Cheese connoisseurs insist that the best cheeses are made from raw milk that has been neither pasteurized nor homogenized. The trouble is that raw milk is not readily available and quite often there are legal impediments to buying it directly from farmers. The basis for these legal impediments is widespread recognition of the likelihood of the presence of pathogens in raw milk.
In former times the largest risks of raw milk were brucellosis and tuberculosis; today the risks are E. coli, salmonella, and listeria. Testing of vats of milk in modern times shows that even from healthy cows, anywhere from 0.87% to 12.6% of raw milk harbors dangerous pathogens.62 How do healthy cows give pathogen-infested milk? They don’t. Inadequate sanitation and cleaning of equipment introduces fecal bacteria into the milk. The reason pasteurization became a requirement in the first place was that farmers were actively falsifying their records so that tuberculosis-infected cows wouldn’t have to be removed from milk production.63
The reason it continues to be required is because human nature hasn’t changed, and maintaining sanitation on an industrial scale of a biological product created by an animal that excretes feces requires extreme levels of conscientiousness that cannot be guaranteed. In essence, because the healthiness of cows and their milk can be tested to assure a safe product without pasteurization, it is possible to sell perfectly healthy raw milk. But pasteurization is required anyway to compensate for the existence of lazy or dishonest people that will prioritize the production of a single infected cow over the health and well-being of their customers. I'm quite sure most people would do the right thing, but in an industrial system where the outputs of various farms are mixed together, it only requires one feces-contaminated vat to sicken thousands of people.
Obviously, raw milk that does not contain pathogens can be made. Humans have consumed raw milk for thousands of years before pasteurization was invented. Such milk was collected at home by the end users, so there was a direct correlation between shoddiness and adverse consequences that would result from collecting milk in a bucket that wasn’t clean. The milk was used immediately rather than transported thousands of miles, so any pathogens present had less opportunity to multiply to dangerous or infective levels. It is therefore possible to obtain raw milk that will not make you sick, provided it is supplied by an honest and conscientious farmer.
How to determine if someone is honest and conscientious, I can’t say. If I could write a book describing a sure-fire technique of that sort, personnel managers across the world would rejoice. In the absence of that, I would instead look at the idea of mutual self-interest. If a farmer were to sell you raw milk that made you sick, your family could sue him into oblivion. So it is in his best interest, if he sells raw milk at all, to make sure it is pristine. Many such farmers use small-scale low-temperature vat pasteurization just to be sure, and this process is less damaging to the milk proteins than standard pasteurization processes.
One other layer of protection is to only use raw milk to make hard cheeses that are aged for longer than two months. The process of cheese-making, when combined with the conditions of aging in cheese, serve to eliminate potential pathogens and render the cheese safe. This only applies to aged hard cheeses! Soft cheeses and those eaten less than two months from manufacture should be considered as risky as raw milk, and I personally avoid making cheese from raw milk, but that’s an individual choice.
If you use raw milk in cheese-making, there are only two procedural changes you’ll need to adopt. The first is that you can avoid using calcium chloride (described later), and the other is that when heating the milk, especially for thermophilic cheeses, you will need to top-stir the milk. Top stirring is just slowly dragging a utensil across the top quarter-inch of milk in order to keep the milk fats from separating out.
To find raw milk, I recommend the following Internet resources:
• A Campaign for Real Milk: www.realmilk.com
• The Weston A. Price Foundation: www.westonaprice.org
• Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund: www.farmtoconsumer.org
Categories of Cheese
Cheese can be categorized in various ways depending upon the substances from which it is made, its appearance or consistency, whether it is aged or eaten fresh, and the procedures used to produce it. For our purposes, we will use fresh and aged cheeses as categories, as well as soft and hard cheeses, since these categories have the greatest differentiation.
Quality ingredients and equipment will contribute to a quality product.
Equipment
When it comes to the equipment needed to make cheese, quality matters. The good news is that most of this equipment is a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. You will likely end up ordering most of these items over the Internet because you may have difficulty finding them locally.
Measuring Cups and Spoons
You want both a large (2+ cup) and small (1 cup) Pyrex™ glass liquid measuring cups. You will also need measuring spoons, but not the ordinary cheap ones you get at the dollar store. You want high-quality stainless steel measuring spoons that measure in 1/32, 1/16, 1/8, and ¼ teaspoon increments, as well as the traditional sizes.
I have noted by comparing volumes to my laboratory standards that cheap measuring spoons are often undersized or over-sized. This is not a critical matter when making a cake; when making cheese it can spell the difference between success and failure.
Large Double Boiler
With batches of cheese starting with a gallon of milk or less and that use a mesophilic starter culture (more on starter cultures later), you can get by with a standard large pot that you set in a sink of hot water. For batches of cheese requiring more than a gallon of milk or using a thermophilic starter culture, you will need a double-boiler. In cheese-making, this double-boiler is also called a “cheese pot.” For very small batches of cheese starting with a quart of milk, you can improvise by setting a smaller pot into a larger one as long as the handles on the smaller pot will sit on the lip of the larger pot so the smaller one is surrounded by water.
Again, depending on the size of your largest intended batch of cheese, you may be able to use a double-boiler as small as eight quarts. But because it takes a large amount of milk to make enough curd to yield very much hard cheese after pressing, you won’t go wrong with a boiler as large as 20 quarts. No matter what size you use, make sure it is stainless steel because acidified milk will leach aluminum or iron into your curd and impart metallic flavors.
If you don’t already have a double-boiler, this is probably the most expensive item you’ll need to get. Searching the Internet, I found prices ranging from $88 to $130 for a 20-quart model. It won’t come cheaply, but you’ll be thankful that you got it. You can use it for batches of cheese starting with anywhere from one gallon to four gallons of milk, and its configuration will help to hold temperatures steady while preventing scorching.
Colander
You’ll need a large eight-quart colander that will fit into the cheese pot with the handles resting on the edges of the pot. You’ll use this to separate the curds from the whey, with the whey going back into the pot.
Special Utensils
You need a large stainless steel slotted spoon, a stainless steel skimming ladle, and a stainless steel curd knife. This latter utensil is specialized so you will probably have to get it via an Internet source.
You want high-quality coarse (20 thread count) and fine (60 thread count) cheesecloth. The fine cheesecloth is used for making soft cheese such as cream cheese; the coarse cheesecloth is used to hold harder cheeses during the pressing or curing process.
Cheesecloth is packaged in two-yard increments, so you get a piece that is three feet wide and six feet long. Cut off pieces as needed with good scissors. Before use, cheesecloth must be sterilized. Put it in a pan of water, boil for five minutes and then dump the cheesecloth and water into a colander in the sink. Cheesecloth can be re-used. Rinse it under cool running water, work a few drops of dish liquid into it, rinse it thoroughly, and boil it for five minutes. After boiling, hang it up to dry, then store the dried cheesecloth in an airtight bag. Don’t forget to sterilize it before using it again.
Bamboo Sushi Mats
These allow good air circulation for cheese that is either draining or aging, and is essential in making hard cheeses. Luckily, they are inexpensive at $4 each or less. They can’t be sanitized and should be discarded after use.
Two types of cheese press.
Cheese Wax or a Vacuum Sealer
Cheese wax is used to protect the cheese from air while it ages. This is a special kind of wax that melts at a low enough temperature that it won’t hurt the cheese when you brush it on. Don’t try to substitute canning wax for this! Another alternative is to use a vacuum sealer to seal the cheese in an airtight bag from which all air has been evacuated. That’s what I do because it is more convenient than waxing.
A cheese press is used to knit the curds together into a solid mass while expelling excess whey. There are a variety of designs of varying expense and complexity. A search on the Internet will even reveal many free design plans for making your own.
For most of the batches of cheese I’ve made, I have used a simple plastic press and mold that only cost $21. The downside is that you have to use external weights with it. Still, you can’t beat it for the price and ease of use. Recently, I have acquired a stainless steel press made by Wood Lab that works very well.
Instant-read Digital Thermometer
Temperatures are critical when making cheese. Some types of cheese require gradually raising the temperature or holding at a certain temperature for a specified time. The best thermometer for such purposes is one that gives you an instant and accurate reading. A good digital thermometer is not expensive.
I have a “Norpro electronic digital read thermometer/timer” that cost $16 and a hand-held Hamilton Beach instant-read digital thermometer. Both cost under $20, have stainless steel probes that are easy to sterilize, and can be found at cookware stores.
Traditionally, many styles of cheese were quite literally aged in caves. Caves maintain a constant temperature and humidity throughout the year. Most of us don’t have access to a suitable cave, and we don’t have an area in the house that will reliably maintain a certain temperature for months on end.
If you decide to make cheeses requiring aging, you will find a dedicated refrigerator indispensable. A second-hand dormitory-sized refrigerator and an external thermometer set up to turn it on and off as needed will work perfectly for such an endeavor. A refrigerator dedicated to cheese-making is called a “cheese cave.”
Ingredients
Not all of these ingredients are needed for all cheeses, but you’ll want them on-hand. Some of these you may already have from your excursions into wine, beer, and vinegar making.
Vinegar, lemons, and tartaric acid
These common acids are used to make soft cheeses via the direct acidification method. In this method, the milk is heated to a certain temperature, a measured amount of acid is added and stirred into the milk, and then the milk clots after a period of time. This clotted milk is poured into a colander lined with cheesecloth; the cheesecloth is tied into a bag. The bag is hung in a warm place for the whey to drain out of the soft curds. These are among the easiest cheeses to make, and they work especially well as dips and spreads.
Calcium chloride, 30% solution
When milk is pasteurized, the calcium ion balance is upset in the milk, which can impede proper curd formation. A small amount of calcium chloride solution diluted further in distilled water and mixed into the milk can correct this imbalance.
You can order food-grade calcium chloride and make the solution yourself (percentages are by weight!), or you can order the pre-mixed solution from various Internet stores specializing in cheese making supplies.
Calcium chloride, incidentally, is also an ingredient in some ice melting pellets used to melt the ice on sidewalks and driveways. This is a very crude product that isn’t suitable for human consumption, so make sure you get food grade calcium chloride.
Flaked or canning salt
Salt is used as a flavor enhancer, a bacteriostatic preservative, a modulator for enzymatic action, and it helps expel water from cheese curds through osmotic pressure. Special “flaked” cheese salt is available, but canning salt or Celtic sea salt will do as well.
The important thing is to avoid the ordinary salts in the grocery store because not only do many of them contain iodine, they often contain anti-caking agents and other chemicals that could interfere with cheese-making. So anything you use should be purely salt.
Starter Culture
You can buy starter culture in packets from a supplier, or you can make your own from buttermilk and yogurt. Starter cultures are either mesophilic (meaning “medium heat-loving”) or thermophilic (meaning “high heat-loving”). Starter culture is an inoculant containing a mix of bacteria that eat the lactose in milk and excrete lactic acid. The first purpose of these bacteria is to lower the pH of the milk in order to encourage curd formation. The second purpose is the continuing development of flavor characteristics during the making and aging of the cheese. The nature of the starter culture strongly influences the flavor of the cheese.
Mesophilic starter cultures work best at room temperature—around 72 degrees. They usually contain at least Streptococcus lactis, and many also contain Streptococcus lactis var. cremoris along with other lactic acid bacteria such as L. delbrueckii subsp. lactis, L. lactis subsp. lactis biovar diacetylactis, and Leuconostoc mesenteroides subsp. cremoris.
Streptococcus lactis is used to make cultured buttermilk; therefore fresh buttermilk with active live cultures can be used to make a mesophilic starter culture for cheese-making. Cheeses that begin with a mesophilic starter include farmhouse cheddar, edam, stilton, and Monterey Jack, among others.
Thermophilic starter cultures work best at temperatures above 80 degrees and below 130 degrees. A specific recipe will dictate the best temperature within this range for the particular cheese being produced, but the culture works best at 110 degrees. Exceeding 130 degrees may kill a thermophilic culture. This culture may like heat, but it doesn’t want to be scalded or boiled. Thermophilic starters are used to create Swiss and Parmesan cheeses among others. Streptococcus thermophilus is a common bacteria in thermophilic starter cultures, but Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, L. delbrueckii subsp. lactis, L. casei, and L. plantarum are all used.
Yogurt is made with thermophilic bacteria. One prominent brand of organic yogurt uses six live cultures that include Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactoba-cillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, and L. casei. This means that plain yogurt can be used to make more yogurt, and it can also be used to make a thermophilic starter culture for cheese.
If you opt to buy starter cultures from a cheese-making supply store instead of making your own, there are only two important things you need to know: You want the sort of culture called a “direct vat” culture, and you should put it in the coldest part of your freezer the very second you get it. Keep it in the freezer until ready for use.
Rennet
Rennet is an enzyme that was originally derived from the stomachs of suckling animals. It is a proteolytic enzyme that breaks protein bonds in such a way as to turn liquid milk into solid curds. All infant mammals produce rennet. This turns milk into a solid form that stays in their digestive tract longer. That’s why when a baby spits up milk, it has mysteriously turned into a clumpy solid. Babies of all mammals have miniature internal cheese factories.
In practice, animal rennet is a byproduct of veal production. Animal rennet of this sort is extremely perishable and has to be kept refrigerated. It’s also pretty expensive.
Rennet can also be made from certain fungi and plants. The sort made from plants has to be made fresh on the spot, which may not be feasible during winter or if you can’t find the plants. For our purposes I am recommending vegetable rennet, which is actually made from fungi. It is inexpensive and if you put it in the freezer it will stay good for about six months. It comes in tablets that can be divided into halves and quarters; this must be done carefully as it has a tendency to disintegrate.
Rennet is an extremely powerful enzyme. Tiny quantities will clot gallons of milk. When adding rennet, dissolve the required amount into a quarter cup of distilled water over a period of 20 minutes, then sprinkle it over the surface of the milk. Mix it into the milk using up-down and back-and-forth motions rather than swirling because swirling doesn’t mix as efficiently. It’s important that rennet be mixed efficiently because otherwise the curd it forms will be of uneven consistency.
How to Make Rennet from Nettles
In a pinch, you might need to make your own rennet from nettles. This rennet works, but it doesn’t give as clean a break or as solid a curd.
Put a pound of stinging nettle tips in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a light boil and boil until the volume has been reduced by half. Filter through cheesecloth into a clean container. You can keep this in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. You use one cup per gallon of milk to be curdled.
Other Cultures and Enzymes
As your cheese-making expertise increases, you’ll want to try to make specific types of cheese. Toward that end, you will need different cultures and enzymes.
Lipase is an enzyme that splits milkfat into free fatty acids. It develops a characteristic picante flavor in the manufacturing of feta, blue, mozzarella, and provolone cheeses. Like rennet, it is extremely powerful. Unless a recipe directs otherwise, use between 1/16 and 1/8 tsp of the powder per gallon of milk. Dissolve the powder in a half cup of cool water for 30 minutes prior to use. Lipase is added immediately before rennet by sprinkling it on top of the milk and mixing it in using an up-down and back-and-forth motion.
Propionic Shermanii culture is used to create the characteristic holes and flavor of Swiss cheeses. As it ferments, it creates carbon dioxide that expands to create the holes. This is added to thermophilic starter culture at the rate of 1/16 tsp per gallon of milk.
Not all mesophilic or thermophilic starter cultures are created equal. The specific varieties of bacteria make a difference in the ultimate flavor of your cheese. As you learn more about cheese, you will want to try other starter cultures.
62 Position Statement on Raw Milk Sales and Consumption, Cornell University Food Science Department
63 “Not on My Farm!: Resistance to Bovine Tuberculosis Eradication in the United States,” Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode, January 2005, The Journal of Economic History (2007), 67 : 768-809 Cambridge University Press, Copyright © 2007 The Economic History Association, doi:10.1017/S0022050707000307
