Cheesemaking:  Embracing imperfection

If you are a recovering perfectionist, and are looking for an activity that will support and encourage that recovery, cheese making just might be for you!  I started my cheese making adventure in 2021 when our mama goat had filled our refrigerator to overflowing with milk.  Even after I started making homemade yogurt, we just couldn’t keep up.  Then a friend introduced me to her friend Heidi, who was making cheese using raw local cow’s milk.  Heidi gave me a sample of her gouda.  Wow, was it good!  So, you know me, of course I had to give cheese making a try.   

I started out making whole milk ricotta using recipes from the internet, which involved acidifying the milk with citric acid, vinegar or lemon juice and then heating it to form curds.  The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines curds as “the thick casein-rich part of coagulated milk”, or from the Cambridge dictionary in plain English “the solid substance that forms when milk turns sour”.  In cheese making, we manipulate milk to help it form curds, rather than waiting for it to ‘spoil’. The liquid left behind is whey, a word many of you are familiar with from the children’s nursery rhyme,  “Little Miss Muffet, sat on a tuffet, eating her curds and whey….”   

My ricotta attempts worked so-so, and although they weren’t anything special, I made passable ricotta for my lasagna.   I tried an internet version of “chèvre” also using added acid and heat to form curd.   It was edible, but lacked the tangy sourness I associate with chèvre.   I used it like a ricotta for cooking.  I tried a 30 minute fresh mozzarella, again adding acid to sour the milk. I made a big mess, and a cheese that was edible, if you put a lot of salt on it, and didn’t mind that it was the texture of rubber.  Maybe I succeeded in making cheese curds?  

I did some more reading and decided if I was really going to make a go at cheesemaking, I needed to take the plunge and invest in better information and some real cheesemaking supplies and cultures.   From the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company (one of a couple of good cheese making resources)   I ordered a book about making cheese, a chèvre kit, and a couple of single use packets of cheese culture.   The kit made it easy to make a nice tangy, cultured chèrve, and the book convinced me that I needed even more cheese making stuff.   I hunted down a small wine refrigerator on Craigs list to be my “cheese cave” and ordered better cheese cloth, as well as butter muslin, some cheese forms (molds), calcium chloride, and rennet.  

Culturing milk with cheese cultures to produce acidity, and adding rennet to form curd, are the first steps in cheese making for most cheeses.  If you don’t know what rennet is, and you are a vegetarian who loves good cheese, you might want to stop reading right now.  My first cheese making book, Home Cheese Making, by Ricki Carroll, explains that rennet is a preparation containing the enzyme rennin, which is produced in the stomach of ruminant mammals and helps the young digest their mother’s milk.  Rennin curdles the casein in milk, separating milk into curds and whey.   Although there are some vegetable sources of rennet-like enzyme activity,  the most common rennet used in cheese making is animal rennet which is collected from the stomachs of calves, lambs or kids (baby goats) harvested while the young animals are still on a milk only diet.   Wondering how this fact had previously eluded  me, I pulled out every packet of store bought cheese in my refrigerator. All the ingredient lists include the much less specific word, enzyme, instead of rennet. I love cheese, so I guess it is a good thing I am not a vegetarian, or I would have an ethical dilemma on my hands. 

With my cheesemaking book in hand, I have been exploring cheese making.  (I have also bought a lot more cheese making stuff, but let’s not talk about that….)  I have made many cheeses and (so far) have perfected very few, although all but one was edible, and most were at least tasty if not exactly what I had expected.  Soft cheeses are quick, and the easiest to make.  I am now consistently making a soft chèvre-like cheese called fromage blanco.  It is not always made with goat’s milk but it works well with it.  It is fast (ready in less than 24 hours), easy to make, and delicious. It has replaced cream cheese in our kitchen.   I have also learned to make a somewhat firmer soft cheese (Cabécou) which I marinate in herb and garlic infused olive oil for a week before we start eating it. In its most recent version, it is definitively good enough to share with friends.  

Semihard and hard cheeses are, no pun intended, much harder to make.  I have tried making fresh mozzarella a couple more times, in the most recent version using a cheese culture to acidify my milk. Although the last batch was reasonably tasty, I have yet to get a texture even remotely similar to fresh mozzarella from the store or our local cheese maker at the farmers market.  And it is always messy!  So, I am thinking I might just leave making mozzarella to others.  I have a reasonable grasp of feta, and it freezes well, so I can make it in fairly large batches and save some for later.  But most hard cheese are more challenging and you have to wait weeks or months for the cheese to mature enough to eat, ie weeks or months before you know if your attempt was a pass or a fail. I have had only one total failure, an aged semisoft, leaf wrapped cheese (O’Banon) that was not meant to be a mold rind cheese, but came out of the cheese cave so green and fuzzy, I just could not see trying to eat it.   I have made a gouda which was good, but didn’t come close to the taste of the sample of gouda that got me started.   I have a second attempt in the cheese cave now, but I already know, because I had trouble with the curd, that it isn’t likely to be “gouda” as I know it.  Never the less, I will give it a chance and in another month we will see what kind of cheese I have made instead.  I have tried a Havarti which was very tasty but didn’t taste anything like Havarti.   (In my defense for that one, Havarti is meant to be a cow’s milk cheese.)   I have made two attempts at a goat milk cheddar, the first of which was ok, but not cheddar, and the second of which has a lovely cheddar flavor, but, as proven when I tried to make grilled cheese sandwiches, doesn’t really like to melt.   The sandwiches were tasty but not your typical grilled cheese.  It is only recently that I learned that I may have accidentally made a more expensive and hard to find, minimally melting cheese used when including cheese in hard salamis.  Still, I would like to figure out how to make cheddar that tastes right AND melts.   

I have yet to buy the mold cultures that I will need to venture down the path of blue cheese and mold rind cheese, but I imagine I will get there eventually.  If my experience to date is any indication of what is to come, I expect I will continue to make many cheeses that are interesting, sometimes unique, and usually tasty, but often not exactly what I was intending.   And I am sure I will have a few more downright failures.   Thankfully, I have chickens that are not too picky, so things rarely go to waste.   Along the way I will continue to learn the art of cheese making and also to quiet my inner perfectionist and accept that good can be good enough.