Making Artisan Cheese (4 page)

The Festival of Cheeses: A Cheese Lover’s Paradise

If you want to have a mind-blowing cheese experience, mark your calendar for the American Cheese Society’s Festival of Cheeses. The festival is the capstone of the society’s annual conference, and features hundreds of artisan and specialty cheeses created and presented by cheese professionals. It’s not hard to see why it is such a popular event for cheese lovers. Where else can you see and taste so many varieties under one roof? The only word of warning for planning to attend the festival: come on an empty stomach.

CHAPTER TWO
Cheese-Making Basics

It is safe to say that practically everyone has begun the process of making cheese at one time or another, usually unintentionally. If you’ve had a bottle of spoiled milk sitting in the back of the refrigerator with the solids settled to the bottom, then you have the makings of what could become cheese. This curdled milk, with its sour flavor, has, shall we say, limited appeal as a cheese, but it does underscore the basic notion that cheese in its most essential element is simply soured milk. A cheese maker applies this principle in a controlled environment to provide a consistent product in a shorter period of time. This is accomplished by adding a combination of cultures and enzymes to milk. And because milk is the base for cheese, it is best to start by looking at the composition of milk, learning what types of milk can be used for cheese making, and discovering some of the unique influences various kinds of milk can have on cheese quality.

Milk is the base for all cheeses, so the logical place to begin, for a first-time cheese maker, is looking at the composition of milk, learning what types of milk can be used for cheese making, and discovering some of the unique influences on the quality of various cheeses that can be attributed to the milk used to make them.

The essence of exceptional cheese lies in the quality of the milk used to make it.

Creamy, soft-textured, rich-tasting cheeses such as Camembert owe their melt-in-the-mouth goodness to high milk-fat content.

Composition of Milk

The average person likely does not give milk a second thought. It’s there at every supermarket and convenience store, readily available in every container size and flavor imaginable. In a sense, we take milk for granted. To a cheese maker, however, milk is something glorious—it’s a gift from Mother Nature and from a generous animal. If you were to ask any artisan cheese maker about the milk he or she uses to make cheese, he or she will wax on eloquently about its composition, the animal source, and its general characteristics. So let’s look into this subject a little further.

Milk is often called nature’s most perfect food, because it supplies almost all of the nutrients and vitamins that the human body requires (the notable exceptions are vitamin C and iron). This nutritious drink has been a mainstay of mankind for countless centuries, and for nearly as long, man has been using it as the main ingredient for cheese. Milk is composed of several major components. Four of these components—fat, casein, lactose, and whey protein—are essential to properly making cheese.

FAT
Fat plays a crucial role in cheese production. It is one of the main components responsible for flavor and aroma. It also plays a key role in forming the texture and body of a cheese, particularly in the ripened cheeses, such as Camembert or Alsatian Muenster. As anyone who has tasted a low-fat cheese knows, it lacks flavor and texture— quite simply, it doesn’t taste like cheese. Although fat can be a loaded word in today’s world, it is an essential element for making cheese.

The delectably stringy quality of some types of cheese, such as mozzarella—the crowning glory of pizza—comes from an elastic component of milk that is called casein.

CASEIN
Casein is the major protein found in milk. Casein is suspended in milk, meaning that it does not dissolve. This is an important distinction, because it makes casein available for extraction by a chemical process, which ultimately leads to the creation of cheese. Casein, because of its unique structure, has elastic qualities that can shrink or expand, giving cheese its elastic texture. Quite simply, casein combined with fats make up most of the raw material needed to make cheese.

WHEY PROTEIN
Whey protein comprises only 0.6% of milk. Unlike casein, which is suspended in milk and provides the majority of protein, whey protein is soluble in milk, meaning it is contained within the liquid. Consequently, whey protein retains more moisture than casein and is nonelastic. For these reasons, it is a secondary source of solids for making cheese, traditionally ricotta.

LACTOSE
Lactose is milk sugar, or more correctly, a carbohydrate. It is an essential element to cheese making because it provides the necessary energy for the beneficial bacteria in milk to grow and thrive, thereby starting the fermentation process. Without lactose, there would be no cheese.

Whey is a protein-rich, watery by-product of making cheese and yogurt. It can be used in baking or to make other cheeses, such as Ricotta and Gjetost.

Types of Animal Milk and Their Influence on Cheese

Although a cheese can, in theory, be made from any lactating animal (historical references in ancient Rome cite cheese made with mare’s milk), the vast majority of the world’s cheeses come from one of three animals: cow, goat, or sheep. All milks contain the aforementioned elements, but there are differences between the various breeds of each species of animal that have a profound effect on any cheese made from it.

The Importance of Cleanliness

Cheese is created by specific bacteria and other organisms, and cross contamination from other kinds of bacteria found in your kitchen can spoil a batch of cheese. Bacteria can keep cheese from setting up properly, give it a bitter or off flavor, or worse—make it unhealthy to eat.

Choose glass, stainless-steel, or food-grade plastic equipment that can be sterilized. Avoid porous materials, such as disposable plastics and wooden utensils, which are difficult to sterilize.

Before making cheese, sterilize all of your equipment. To sterilize your milk-heating pan, pour water into the pan to a depth of about 2" (5 cm). Set the lid on the pan, and boil the water for ten minutes. Drain the water before adding the milk.

Keep a pan of water at a rolling boil, and put your cheese cloth, mats, knives, stirring spoons, curd knife, and other utensils into the water for a minimum of five minutes (or leave them in until you are ready to use them). Pans, molds, colanders, and other larger pieces of equipment can be adequately cleaned by running them through the dishwasher right before using them.