Most homemade cheeses are made from milk, bacteria and rennet. Cheese can be made from almost any type of milk, such as cows, goats, sheep, skimmed milk, whole milk, raw milk, pasteurized milk and milk powder.
What do you need?
Before buying dairy products, it's best to find a formula for making cheese at home. Then we started to create a list of ingredients and equipment needed to make cheese.
Cheese manufacturing technology
Here are some tips and tricks, as well as information about specific technologies. However, we should remember that people have made cheese for thousands of years. This process can be simple or scientific. As we hope, it depends on ourselves.
We will also show you a guide to how to make cheese. This is not a recipe, but a good way to understand this ancient art skill.
How to make cheese at home
Tip 1: start with fresh hot milk
The better and fresher the milk you use, the more delicious your cheese will be. It's good to buy milk on the same day you make cheese. To heat the milk, you can heat it by milking it (in this case, you have to be on the dairy farm), or put it from the fridge into a large pot and heat it slowly in the cooking appliance.
Tip 2: milk oxidation
There are many ways to make cheese, but first you must make milk oxidase. One way is to add acid (vinegar or citric acid) to milk to get the right acidity. This process (called direct acidification) is carried out in whey cheese and mascarpone cheese. Another way is to add crops or live bacteria.
Over time, rising temperatures and a lack of competitive bacteria, these crops absorb lactose into milk and convert it into lactic acid.
Tip 3: add coagulant
The most common coagulant is rennet, an enzyme that binds proteins to milk. However, the word "rennet" is a little vague. Chymosin may come from "traditional chymosin" in the stomach of animals. It can also be a "bacterial" chymosin, sometimes euphemistically known as "plant chymosin", which comes from recombinant bacteria. Otherwise, chymosin may come from the fungal "microbial chymosin". Using the more general and precise term "thrombotic", we can add a "vegetable" thickener from figs or thistles. Put the thickener into liquid milk and wait for some kind of milk jelly to produce.
Tip 4: test the stability of milk jelly
When you give chymase enough time for protein fermentation in milk, milk will change from liquid to gel. You can press the surface of the milk with clean hands and try the "stability" of the gel.
Tip 5: cut tofu
Now, the next step is to cool the frozen milk from a huge head into smaller cubes or fragments. You can do this with a "cheese harp", a knife, or even a stirring wire. The size of the curd you cut will greatly affect the amount of water retained in the final cheese. The smaller, softer and older the original cheese, and vice versa.
Tip 6: stir, cook and wash the curd
In the next few minutes or even an hour (depending on the recipe), you will mix the curd into the cooking appliance. If possible, you can turn on the temperature and cook the cheese while stirring. At this stage, the most important thing is that the acid continues to grow in the curd. By stirring, the curd becomes dry.
The more you cook and stir, the drier the cheese will be. Cleaning is the process of removing whey from utensils and replacing it with water. This creates a milder, sweeter and more elastic cheese mixture.
Tip 7: drain the curd
Finally, it's time to separate the curd from whey. You just need to put the contents of the jar into the sieve in the sink, which is almost the last step. You can wait 10 minutes, let the curd stay at the bottom, then press the liquid cheese together at the bottom of the pot, then take them out of the pot and cut them into small pieces.
Generally speaking, we move very fast at this time, because we want to keep the heat in the porridge and encourage them to sit together and form a smooth head. If we wait too long, the curd will cool and the cheese will dissolve.
Tip 8: aging of salt and cheese
Once the curd is separated from whey, you can add salt. Or you can move the curd to the last position (or basket) and press the cheese turntable before pickling. If the cheese is pickled, properly acidified, and has the right moisture in it, it may deteriorate into more complex things. It can also be eaten immediately - completely at the same time.