This post is Part 4 of the continued basic home cheese making instructions. See the Curd Nerd Beginner Page or the Basic Instructions category for previous parts.
You’ve waited patiently, letting the Rennet do it’s thing and now you have a lovely firm, set curd.
Most recipes will instruct you to cut the curd at this point. Read more
This post is Part 3 of the continued basic home cheese making instructions. See the Curd Nerd Beginner Page or the Basic Instructions category for previous parts.
We’ve talked milk, we’ve added the cultures. Now it’s time to set up a curd. Let’s add the Rennet.
Cheese starter cultures are a form of bacteria used in the production of cheese. They are added to the milk at the start of the cheese making process (not for all cheeses though, there are exceptions such as Haloumi) in order to determine taste, smell, texture and mouth feel.
The main cheese starter cultures are Thermophilic and Mesophilic. Thermophilic cultures can handle being heated to higher temperatures, Mesophilic cultures suffers at higher temperatures.
There are also specific culture strains made by commercial manufacturers which fall into each of these types (Therm and Meso) and each subtly changes the results you will get with your cheese. Your recipe should tell you which culture type you need.
This post is Part 1 of the continued basic home cheese making instructions. See the Curd Nerd Beginner page or the Basic Instructions category for previous parts.
All of the cheeses you will read about here will be made with raw milk. Fresh, raw, cows milk to be exact.