Learning to Make Cheese

I'm still trying to catch up from last week's processing of homeschool convention booklets. We had milk in every refrigerator, since I didn't have time last week to do anything with it. I've attempted to make some sort of cheese every day as soon as the morning milk comes in.

I have a lot to learn when it comes to making cheese.

Since I hadn't ordered ingredients for making real Mozzarella cheese, I used a different recipe to make a mild cheese that still melts like Mozzarella. The ingredients are milk, vinegar and salt. I heated the milk to 140 degrees, then add vinegar -- and there is cheese! A day or so later the boys grate it for me, and we use it in pizza and lasagna. It tastes great!

I went on to heat the leftover milk product to 180 degrees and added a bit more vinegar, and the next product I got out of it was something similar to Ricotta. Sometimes it's drier than other times, so I have added some cream to it, and it worked in the lasagna just like the real stuff.

Last summer I helped in the kitchen of a local retreat center when they were hosting a Sons of Norway Norwegian camp. It was there I tasted a goat cheese called Gjetost. There are different spellings as well as names for this cheese. The Norwegians place it on bread (just a very thin slice) along with raspberry jam, and it was delicious! I determined then and there I was going to learn how to make it.

The lady that introduced me to it stated that the process needed both goat and cow milk, but I have since discovered there are three cheeses that can be made: whey from just goat milk, a combination of goat and cow milk whey, and whey from only cow milk. Our goats are dry now, so I will use cow milk until our goats are milked again in the spring.

I found a recipe on the Fankhauser cheese website, but it seemed hard to follow. About a year ago I purchased Ricki Carroll's book, Home Cheese Making, and found the recipe in there. I had lots of questions after reading her recipe, but forged ahead and made a batch.

Mysost (another name is Primost) is the result of taking the whey byproduct from making cheese and slowly boiling it down to where it carmelizes and thickens. Cream is added towards the end of the process, but that's all there is to the ingredients. This whole process has taken me from 6 to 12 hours. I can see why it's recommended that a wood cookstove be used instead of a conventional stove top -- that's a lot of electricity!

The first time I made a batch the end result was grainy, but that has only happened one other time and I think I've cooked up 5 batches. Each batch has given us approximately 30 ounces out of about 7 quarts of whey. Jim, Peter and I enjoy it on toast for breakfast, along with our homemade raspberry jam. It's easy to make if you have the time to spend in the kitchen close to the stove.