How to Make Homemade Cheese Making Recipes
The milk must be fresh, we suggest that the milk be no more than three days old for fresh raw milk. What we have is one cow and so we store the milk in the fridge until we have our three and a half gallons. For store bought milk just go by the expiry date.
When using milk from your own cow or goat, be sure to store it in clean sanitised containers. Glass containers or stainless steel are ideal in my opinion for they cool quickly and they also clean well in the dishwasher.
All your utilities (cheese cloth, the press, etc.) must be sanitised before using each time. I use any bacterial dish soap and chlorine bleach to wash everything in, following with a very thorough hot rinsing. Cleanliness is the key to success. If you have a wood press, putting it in the dishwasher is not recommended. The dishwasher could ruin your cheese press.
A stainless steel or plastic press are absolutely the best, for they scrub well and are dishwasher compatible. The reason for all the scrubbing and cleanliness to get rid of any potential milk stones that may form on any surface that has come into contact with milk. Milk bacteria multiply very quickly. Unwanted bacteria could ruin your wheel of cheese or even make you sick.
First, let's talk about your kitchen.
- Ideally the temperature of your kitchen should be in the range of 20 C for Canadians or 70F for those who live in the US. Unless you have air conditioning, your kitchen may be too warm during the summer months for cheese making. In the Fall through to Spring, it is much easier to keep the temperature constant around the 70 F mark.
- Next, you don't need a big or fancy kitchen to make cheese from these recipes, but your kitchen must be very clean for the best chance of success. The key is you don't want to get the wrong bacteria working in your cheese, which could lead to a bitter or sour wheel of cheese, yuk!
- We will be using certain types of bacteria to produce the different recipe's and varieties of cheeses. Unwanted bacteria can come from a few crumbs of bread left on the counter to a hair falling into the cheese pot. So give your work area a good thorough cleaning before you begin and you will have very good success with your cheese making.
Take the time necessary to follow the cheese recipe precisely. With ideal tempuratures, a clean kitchen, and proper ingredients, your cheese recipe will make a delicious product.
When you make homemade cheese, you could give it away as a gift cheese. We have found that cheese gifts work great when the cow is just giving too much cheese for our family to eat. We have discovered that family and friends will come back to buy cheese the next time.
They have stood in our doorway and said, “I need to buy some more cheese from you. I have to share this good stuff with my friends at the golf club. It tastes so good, it‘ll make the perfect gift. You don’t mind if they join your cheese club, do you?” You can begin your own cheese club in your area. Your club can feature a cheese of the month. You and your friends can experiment with making a new cheese every month and give a few away as a cheese gift. You just may be surprised at how much fun you can have with your friends while making cheese together and make a little extra income besides.
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