Sweet Cheese Dreams

Have you ever heard that eating homemade cheese at night will give you nightmares? Truth be told this is nothing more than a cheesy legend. In fact, cheese can actually help a good night’s rest – it contains tryptophan, an essential amino acid that has been shown to reduce stress and induce sleep.

How To Make Homemade Feta

Ingredients
1 gallon fresh goat milk
1 tablespoon fresh yogurt (Dannon Plain works well)
1/2 tablet rennet, dissolve in 1/4 cup water
1+ gallon pot with lid (stainless steel with heavy bottom is best; enamel works, but you must stir it!)

Steps
Warm one gallon of fresh goat's milk to 30°C (86°F) and stir it regularly so that it does not burn on the bottom. Remove it from the heat and set aside.
Mix 1 tablespoon of yogurt with an equal amount of milk to blend. Stir the blended yogurt and milk into the warmed milk and mix thoroughly. Cover and and allow the inoculated milk to sit for one hour at room temperature.

While the inoculated milk sits, dissolve 1/2 tablet of rennet in fresh, cool water.

After the inoculated milk has sat for one hour, add the dissolved rennet and stir to mix thoroughly.

Let the inoculated, renneted milk sit covered overnight at room temperature.



Closeup of clean break

Not so clean breakCheck for a clean break the next morning, by which time the milk should have gelled and some of the whey will have separated.

Cut the curd by starting at one side, and cut straight down to bottom. Make the next cut 1/2 inch from and parallel to the first, but sloping slightly (the sliced curd will be wider at bottom than top). Repeat increasing angle with each cut. Turn the pot 90° and repeat cuts. Repeat cuts and turning two more times. The curd pieces should be about ½ inch cubes or slices as you prefer.

With a very clean hand and arm, reach to the bottom and gently lift the curds to stir. Cut the large pieces that appear with a table knife so that they are ½ inch cubes.
Let the cut curds sit, with occasional stirring, for 10-15 minutes until curd is somewhat contracted.

Decant off the whey through the strainer lined with the handkerchief, pouring the curds into the handkerchief. Save the whey for a later step.

Let the cheese drain in the handkerchief until no more whey drains out (about 2-4 hours). It may be drained at room temperature or in the refrigerator, as shown in the image.

Place the drained curds into a bowl. Mix in a 1/2 teaspoon of salt, breaking up the curd.

Homemade cheese Press the cheese into a mold. (See the External Links for how to make your own cheese press.) Line the can with a handkerchief, place the curds inside, fold over the ends of the cloth, place the end on top, and place a weight on top of that. Let sit overnight.

Prepare pickling whey brine (12.5% salt): mix 20 oz of whey (saved from before) with 5 tablespoons of salt. Stir to dissolve. The brine must be acidic or else the cheese will melt on the surface.

Cut the cheese into 1.5 inch cubes and place them in a wide-mouth jar. Pour brine over to cover. Let the cheese pickle for several days in the refrigerator. The cheese will become drier and more easily crumbled with time.

Store in the refrigerator. Rinse before use to remove excess salt.

Warnings
If the culture becomes contaminated at any point, the likelihood of contracting food poisoning from the cheese is greatly increased.
Do not use city tap water to dissolve rennet as it most likely contains chlorine that will make the rennet fail.

Things You'll Need
1 long bladed knife
2 clean sterile handkerchiefs or cheesecloth
strainer
A cheese mold: Cut the ends out of a smooth-sided 4 x 5 inch tin can, save one of the cut ends.
table salt

Homemade Cheese Dangerous?

A Southern California couple is facing criminal charges after allegedly being caught with 375 pounds of “bathtub” homemade cheese at an open-air market in San Bernardino County, the California Department of Food and Agriculture says.
The illegal soft homemade cheese products are known to cause serious illness such as listeria, salmonella or E. coli.

Floribel Hernandez Cuenca, 29, and Manuel Martin Sanchez Garrido, 44, of Montclair, were arrested for selling a variety of unlicensed cheeses to the public. Ms. Cuenca was also arrested on felony cheese making charges.

The 375 pounds of seized illegal homemade cheese included panela, queso fresco and queso oxaca varieties, the CDFA says. It was a significant find, the department says.
“Illegally produced homemade cheese is serious threat to public health,” says CDFA Secretary A.G. Kawamura.

Unlicensed homemade cheeses may carry a bigger price tag than consumers expect: the risk of severe illness, the state says. Infants, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems are the most susceptible. Expectant mothers should be especially guarded, as the listeria organism can cause miscarriages.

To avoid all this worry about unsavory cheese it is better to make your own Homemade Cheese.

Quick way to make Homemade Cheese

Heat the milk in the saucepan over low or medium-low heat , stirring occasionally, until it is roughly 175F, or until it is almost boiling. Add vinegar or lemon juice to the milk a tablespoonfull at a time, stirring slowly, until the milk begins to curdle. When you can tell the difference between the curds and whey (one will look like cottage cheese and the rest like yellow water), then remove from heat and add no more lemon juice or vinegar.
place cheesecloth in a colander with edges draping over the rim. SLOWLY pour the curds into the colander and let sit until most of the water has drained off. Add salt to your liking, tie ends of the cloth and hang over the sink for several hours. Alternatively, add salt, form the curds into a square shape, wrap up in cheesecloth, and place on a cutting board. Place something under one end of the board to have it at a slant, and place a heavy book on top of the wrapped cheese to press out the water. Let sit for several hours or overnight in a cool place. Remove cloth and cut into chunks and store in a plastic container in the refigerator.

Making Cheddar Cheese

This makes approximately 0.5kg (1lb) of Cheddar. The final weight will vary depending on the type of milk. For a larger quantity, adjust the ingredients accordingly. It should be pointed out that it is far more economical to make a larger quantity than the one stated here because it takes just as long to make a small cheese as a larger one.

5 litres (1gallon) full cream milk
1 litre (1.7pints) additional cream (optional)
5ml (1 teaspoon) liquid starter or 5ml DVI dry starter (or half a cup of live yoghurt/live buttermilk although this is not as reliable as a commercial starter)
3ml (half teaspoon) rennet
10g salt
Method
Pasteurisation: Pasteurise the milk to destroy unwanted bacteria. To avoid damaging the subsequent curd, this is normally 66 OC held for 30 minutes. Cool to 21 OC.

Starter:Stir in the starter and leave the milk, covered in a warm place for about an hour so that it can acidify. Don’t leave it for much longer than this otherwise the cheese may be too dry and crumbly.

Rennet: Increase the temperature to 28 OC for goat or ewe’s milk, or to 30 OC for cow’s milk. Mix the rennet with two teaspoonfuls of previously boiled and cooled water and then stir it in. Give it another stir 5 minutes later to stop the cream collecting at the top. Cover the container and then leave the milk to set in a warm place.

Setting: (Coagulating): The curd is normally ready when it is firm to the touch, gives slightly and does not leave a milk stain on the back of the finger. Note that with vegetarian rennet, setting takes longer than with animal rennet. It also takes longer in a cooler environment.

Cutting the curd: This is where the curd is cut in order to release the liquid whey. Cut down into the curd, from top to bottom one way then cut it at right angles to form square columns. The curd is then loosened from around the walls of the pan. Unless a curd knife is available to make horizontal cuts, a palette knife can used to make diagonal cuts to break up the curd into pieces that are approximately pea-sized. Stir gently with the hand for a couple of minutes.

Scalding: Sometimes referred to as cooking, this is where the temperature of the curds and whey is raised slowly while occasional stirring of the curds takes place by hand. Gradually increase the temperature to 38 OC over the next 30-40 minutes.

Pitching: This is the process of giving the whey a final, circular stir so that it whirls round. The curds then gradually sink to the bottom and collect at a central point. Turn off the heat and leave the pan until all movement has ceased in the liquid.

Running the whey: Ladle out as much of the liquid whey as possible, then place a previously sterilised cloth over a stainless steel bucket or large basin and tip in the curds. Make the cloth into a bundle by winding one corner around the other three. This is called a Stilton knot. Place the bundle on a tray which is tilted at an angle to let the whey drain away. Leave for about 15 minutes.

Stacking or cheddaring (Texturing):Untie the bundle and the curds will be seen to have formed into a mass. Cut this into four slices and place one on top of the other then cover with the cloth. After about fifteen minutes place the outer slices of the curd on the inside of the stack, and vice versa. Repeat this process several times until the curd resembles the texture of cooked breast of chicken when it is broken open.

Milling: This is the process of cutting the curd into pea-sized pieces. Traditionally a curd mill was used for this, but it is easy to do it by hand.

Salting: Sprinkle 10g salt onto the milled curds. rolling them gently without breaking them further.

Moulding: This is the process of lining the cheese mould from the press with previously boiled cheesecloth and adding the curd until the mould is full. The corner of the cloth is then folded over the top of the cheese and it is ready for pressing.

Pressing: Once in the mould the curds have a wooden ‘follower’ placed on top so that when the mould is put into the press there is a surface on which to exert an even pressure.

Pressing cheese is essentially a process of compacting the curds while extracting the liquid whey. For the first hour, apply a light pressure so that the fats are not lost with the whey then increase it to the maximum and leave until the following day.

Next day, remove the cheese from the press, replace the cloth with a clean one and put the cheese back in the mould, upside down, and press for another 24 hours.

Drying: Remove the cheese from the press and cloth and dip it in hot water (66 OC) for one minute in order to consolidate and smooth the surface. Place it in a protected area at a temperature of 18-21 OC and leave it to dry for a day or two until a rind begins to form.

Sealing: Once the rind has formed the cheese can be sealed to prevent it becoming unduly desiccated while it is maturing. Large cheeses are sometimes bandaged but it is much easier to use cheese wax that is available from specialist suppliers.

Using a water bath, heat the wax in a pan and stir it to ensure that it is melting evenly.

Do not leave the pan unattended in case of fire! Dip the cheese into the liquid wax and coat thoroughly. It sets quickly, so rotate the cheese so that the area where your fingers are touching can also be coated. If preferred, you can paint on the wax with a paintbrush but this will probably need two coats.


Maturing: The last stage is often the all-important one. A cheese, which is tasteless and bland when freshly made, is full of flavour and body after its proper ripening period.

Leave to mature in a cool, dry place at 8 – 11 OC where it should be turned daily for the first three weeks, then on alternate days after that. For a large mild cheese, ripening should take place for at least three months. A longer period of ripening produces a more mature cheese. Smaller cheeses are usually ready after a month.

Expand your horizons

Try a new type of cheese every week.

Its Homemade Cheese Time!

Now is the time of year when the leaves start to turn and the air gets crisp. It makes me want all things homemade. Homemade cheese is one of my favorite things this time of year.