Next Step in Cheesemaking

We took another step in our cheesemaking adventure this weekend, as Maggie's Amish friend gave us another couple of gallons of fresh milk. So far we have made mozzarella and paneer, which are sort of free form, soft cheeses made by adding acid such as vinegar or citric acid to curdle the milk. We bought some starter culture, rennet, and a small cheese press to make a hard cheese that can be grated or sliced. We are starting with a simple farmhouse cheddar. This cheese does not require brining like other hard cheeses or long aging, so it seemed like a good place to start.

We started with a recipe from Ricki Carroll's book, Home Cheesemaking, which we probably purchased 15 years ago, and modified it a little using a recipe from the New England Cheese Company's website. It was a time-consuming process requiring several hours of heating, ripening, and stirring, but we ended up with a large batch of curds, which we salted and stuffed into our new cheese press.

A day later, we ended up with a cylinder of what actually looks and smells like cheese. The next step is to let it air dry several days, flipping it a couple of times a day to develop a rind. It will then get vacuum sealed and stored for 60 days. A long time to wait to find out if this actually produced something that tastes good.