BS: Making Cheese

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 May 15 - 09:58 AM

No whey! This thread will curdle your blood, but go ahead and milk it for all its worth until people cream to please top. But maybe this is a music thread, sort of a bleu's song. I'll be interested who can provolone that they make others cheddar with their puns.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 09 May 15 - 06:08 AM

I can be full of good intentions. I've been meaning to have a go at making paneer for I don't know how many years...

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 09 May 15 - 06:05 AM

Last Sunday I made about 1.75 lbs of a cheddar style cheese which I allowed the form a crust before vacuum sealing it. I'll open the first of the two pieces at Whitby Folk Weeks, just over 3 months away. Hopefully it will have matured by then. Yesterday I made another 1.5 lbs of a cheddar style cheese which is drying out as I type. Over the next week or two a Blue Stilton and a Lancashire will follow.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Will Fly
Date: 09 May 15 - 05:05 AM

I want this thread taken out! Out, do you hear?

A few weeks ago, a blood test I had revealed high cholesterol and, even though I feel great, the doc said "No cheese, only low-fat milk, etc."

Well, I loved cheese - ate it every day - and I miss it, how I miss it. I'd kill for a slab of Stilton, murder for a hunk of Lancashire...

Cheese, cheese, cheese... oh, be still my heart!

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 09 May 15 - 04:58 AM

That'll do me, Jack. :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Jack Campin
Date: 09 May 15 - 04:42 AM

Crumbly Lancashire is almost identical to Turkish "tulum" cheese, which is traditionally shipped in a calfskin bag with the hair still on ("tulum" also means "bagpipe"). Tulum cheese is the usual one used for cheese pide - a sort of baguette split along the middle with cheese melted into it.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 May 15 - 11:27 PM

You want good cheese on this side of the pond, look at the Ag department at Washington State University. Cougar Gold and their other varieties are excellent! When universities set up this kind of program everyone wins - the consumer gets good cheese and the students learn best practices for making a quality product.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 May 15 - 08:09 PM

Well, Raggytash, crumbly Lancashire makes superb cheese on toast, as it doesn't go all runny. Only aficionados such as you and I would appreciate that. Also, crumbly Lancashire is my numero uno when I have to raid the fridge at two in the morning, peckish and a bit pissed, when I need a bite. Which is not infrequent, malheureusement. One does have to live, though, and, let's face it, it's either cheese or streaky bacon done crispy.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 08 May 15 - 06:59 PM

Steve, I'm sure I can come up with some tales of the hundreds of cheeses I have sampled to match that. However I've just spent the night listening to George Welsh (superb) had a few pints and bed beckons. I'll just add that as a Lancashire lad myself the choice between Crumbly Lancashire and Lincolnshire Poacher is a very fine line. Only loyalty to my native county makes me favour the Lancashire.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: GUEST
Date: 08 May 15 - 06:56 PM

I made feta once. You warm up a pot of sheep's and/or goat's milk as if preparing to make yogurt, but then you throw in just a pinch of some powder. I don't know what that was, but I think the Greek word for it (ma-YAH) was the same as the word for the yeast you use to make bread, and you differentiated between them at the store by saying "maya for cheese" or "maya for bread."

That's pretty much it. After you add the maya, you let it sit for a little while and it thickens. Then you cut it into chunks and strain it in a cloth, and then put it into a little round basket, salt it, and leave it to drain and dry for a day. Then you either eat it or put it in brine to preserve it until you're ready to eat it.

And if you wanted hard cheese, you took one of those disks and left it outside for a few weeks to dry thoroughly and shrink down to a much flatter disk. Each house had a ventilated screened box mounted on a pole for that purpose.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 08 May 15 - 06:41 PM

Making cheese sounds like a great idea, but here in tne Westcountry you can get superb cheeses, without resorting to Davidstow-style factory stuff, for ridiculously little money. Waitrose "mellow and fruity" Westcountry farmhouse cheddar (strength 5) is a beauty, as is Wookey Hole Cave-aged cheddar, which you can buy in loads of places (it's been on offer in Sainsburys for a while). In the world of cheddar cheese these two are second to none. We went to Bath a couple of weeks ago and bought a lump of Bath Blue from the Fine Cheese Co shop on Walcot Street. What a cheese. Easily the finest blue I've ever tried, and I've tried a lot. I notice that Bath Blue was voted the world' s tastiest cheese by BBC Good Food in 2014, out of 2700 cheeses. Several places sell a very fine and inexpensive Somerset Brie these days, as good as any French stuff. Make sure you buy a ripening Brie and not one that's been stabilised. I'm not a particular fan of Stilton, though Tesco's British Stilton (not "Finest") is as good as any. As a Lancashire lad I love Lancashire cheese, and Kirkham's or Butler's are as good as any. Butler's creamy version makes a superb cheese and piccalilli butty. For a cheese and tomato butty you can't beat a tangy Wensleydale on ciabatta. Tomorrow night we're having some homemade mackerel pate with toast and some cheddar and some St Agur with Bath Olivers. Beat that.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 08 May 15 - 04:38 PM

Closest I've come is making a yogurt cheese that is the consistency of ricotta. Making yogurt (fresh whole milk, heated, cooled, yogurt starter added, covered bowl sits overnight wrapped in towels) into cheese like this is simply to add the finished yogurt to a strainer or cheese cloth and let the whey drip out. So it would be a fresh versus an aged cheese. It's great in lasagna.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 May 15 - 04:09 PM

Years ago, when I was but a girl a cousin who was staying with us made a batch of yellow cheese. She put it into pans and set them on a table in the screened porch to "ripen".

It never ripened. Older siblings of mine kept dipping into the rubbery stuff and ate it all up.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 May 15 - 03:02 PM

You'll know you've got it right when it climbs out of the pantry, logs into Mudcat, and starts posting about how it woke up this morning, got that penicillium blues.

Subject: RE: BS: Making Cheese
From: olddude
Date: 08 May 15 - 03:02 PM

I will ask my amish friends there stuffis aamazing. I never tried to make it

Subject: BS: Making Cheese
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 08 May 15 - 02:33 PM

I've just taken my first steps into making Cheese at home. The results won't be known for some weeks yet. Does anyone else make their own cheese and if so have they any advice to a complete novice like myself.

Cheers

Raggytash