August 12th, 2014

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Making cheese

Tuesday, August 12th, 2014

One thing we have good access to here is goat’s milk. And what better to do with that than make chevre or goat cheese, so I decided to give it a try.

It was very easy and yielded great results.

To start, you heat the milk to about 86 degrees. You then add a very small amount of mesophillic culture (available for about $1 per batch) and let the whole thing sit overnight. The result is a big cake of cheese floating in whey. (For those interested, the whey is good for making bread or smoothies.)

photo 1

You then strain it with cheesecloth. The amount of time you strain for determines how soft or dry the cheese is. I like mine fairly soft, so I only drained it for about an hour.

photo 2

After that, you can add flavoring if you like and shape it if you like. I made plain, honey lemon (blintzes?), and fresh herb chevre and rolled them in waxed paper to make logs like you get at the store.

photo 3

Overall, this was an easy process and was cost effective vs. buying premade cheese. (One gallon of milk yielded about 7 of these good sized logs.) And most important of all, it was delicious!