I’ve been neglecting to write about my cheese making experiences, because I’m so into the activity itself it’s hard to break away and report on it. This is one of those things I just want to dive into and keep improving for life!
The book I’m learning from is Christine’s cheese making bible: Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Homemade Cheeses by Ricki Carroll. Although the recipes intimidated me at first, the clear writing style and Christine’s step by step directions made the process pretty smooth. I’ll be sure to put this on the webstore page, since I need to buy a copy for myself.
The overall lesson I’ve learned is that the basic steps of cheese making are the same for every cheese: warming the milk, mixing in starters and rennet, letting set, cutting, cooking, and draining the curds, placing in a mold, followed by pressing and aging for hard cheeses. Soft cheeses are less labor intensive because they do not need the final preservative methods the hard cheeses require.
The times, temperatures, and cultures for all these steps can be adjusted to produce vastly different textures, flavors, and aromas in the resulting cheese. This is similar to other artisan food methods like bread making and brewing; the basic ingredients and processes are the same, while the timing and temperature are variable. In this way the same milk and cultures can be used to create a smooth, tangy Gouda, a semisoft, sharp Monterey Jack, and many other surprising, one of a kind variations.
Outside of an industrial setting, it is almost impossible to exaclty replicate the same cheese time after time; there will always be slight differences from batch to batch. The hint of unpredictability involved in making artisan foods comes from all the variables that contribute to both process and result. Temperature, humidity, handling, ingredients, even the mood of the cheese maker all combine to create the flavor of each creation. You can take it even further and realize that the goats who make the milk have their own huge contribution to the outcome. What did the goats eat, how was their health, were they happy? A happy goat makes happy milk, which makes for the best cheese you’ve ever tasted in your life!

Tags: artisan cheese, raw cheese, unpasteurized cheese