blessed are the cheesemakers...

[aryanhwy]

So my dad pointed out something that I had also found a bit surprising, namely the use of vinegar instead of rennet or rennin in the recipe I used. Part of the reason that I'd never tried making cheese before is that the concept of using rennet is a bit scary. I bet I could get some via my butcher shop (the Dutch term is 'stremsel'), but dad thinks I could probably even get it at the grocery store. I'll have to look next time I'm there. But the wikipedia article on rennet had a short section at the end on cheese made with acids rather than with rennet, and there is a list of acid-set cheeses. Looking at this, what I made is closest to farmer's cheese or pot cheese. It's not hoop cheese, because salt was added. Some of the other types listed on this page are made not just by straining and pressing the curds, but by kneading or beating them to get a firmer, denser consistency. I want to try that next time; I have no idea what kneading cheese curds would be like, but since my biggest fear of what I'm making right now is that it'll be too crumbly to hold its shape once I start cutting it (I'm waiting until tomorrow, to give it a full day in the fridge being pressed), it seems like a good way to counter-act that potentiality would be the knead the cheese.

The next question which occured to me (in part because we've got ~125ml in the fridge still, and this is one dairy product Slinky turns her nose up at) is whether you can make cheese out of buttermilk. Ever helpful google turned up the abstract of an article in the Journal of Dairy Science entitled "Use of Ultrafiltered Sweet Buttermilk in the Manufacture of Reduced Fat Cheddar Cheese", so if they're publishing about it in scientific journals, it must be possible.

Comments

Cheese-related musings

[xrian.livejournal.com]

One reason I left the book with you is that I found it a bit dry, and the more entertaining bits made me doubt the author's understanding of history a little (though offhand I can't point to any specific howlers). But I like that sort of book on the whole.

I used to make soft curd cheese fairly regularly, years ago, and you're right, it's quite easy. IIRC, I did use rennet and I don't remember it being at all tricky or difficult. (Looking back, I did a lot of things when I was in grad school that I haven't had time for since: enjoy it while it lasts!)

When I was on foreign study in Scandinavia in college, we encountered Gjetost, a Scandinavian product that we thought was extremely weird. It is solid, brownish and looks *exactly* like old-fashioned laundry soap -- which is the first hurdle for Americans to get over. The second hurdle is that although it's called "cheese" (-ost), it's basically condensed whey; it has virtually none of the protein or fat, but all the carbohydrates of whole milk. I can't describe the flavor (it's an acquired taste, we discovered) but it was quite sweet.

This of course doesn't say anything about making cheese from buttermilk, which is rather different from whey in that buttermilk still has most of the cheese protein, just not the fat.

In my disorganized attic of a brain, I recall reading that there were areas of England where a lot of butter was made for market, and the leftover buttermilk was made into cheese for use at home. Suffolk was one such area, and the resulting cheese -- called "Suffolk bang," IIRC -- was notoriously hard and dense due to the near absence of fat. There was even a rhyme about it:

"Knife won't cut it, stick won't beat it;
Dogs bite at it, but can't eat it."

[eleyne-de-c.livejournal.com]

That recipe looks nice and easy. If only milk wasn't so expensive. But I must give it a go some time.

You can get rennet at the supermarket here - it bears no resemblance to a cows stomach though. Its liquid in a bottle. I seem to remember we used to have it in the house when I was young for the making of junket.

[aryanhwy.livejournal.com]

Milk is still pretty reasonable here; a liter of whole milk is .93 EUR, and the 250 ml of cream was only .61 EUR. For this, I'm getting a 455 kg-sized icecream tub nearly full and tightly packed. I think it's actually just about as cheap as buying some of the kinds of cheese that we like (though of course we'd still buy them since I doubt I'll ever be doing things like making cheddar, or gruyere, or parmesan...)