Cream Cheese

[falafael]

Excellant thread, makes me want to make cheese, and like brewstew, love chives, probably thats why i grow them, off topic, brewstes, chives and tomato puree on crackerbread...heaven
Cheers for great cheese idea mind!! :thumb:

 

[MEB]

Great thread. I have recently been toying with the cheese thing...

 

[Dunfie]

Well I hope you all give it a go. As you can see, as long as you follow the fairly simple process you will end up with really good cream cheese. :thumb:

At work this morning breakfast was on me. Bagels and cream cheese was enjoyed by the team and all were more than a little bit impressed. I should have taken a cornie in and blown their socks off. :lol:

 

[Jonnyv]

How did I miss this thread! Great post Dunfie!

Me and two friends made four Camemberts in November. Turned out very nice, we just finished off the last one at the weekend - maybe a tad strong but it was very good for our first attempt - we used Penicillium Candidum for the mold - we also used the whey to make Ricotta (very very easy).

Last Sunday we attempted Goats Cheese - had a bit of trouble getting the goat's milk to curdle properly as it was homogenized ( ) but got there in the end with some calcium chloride (it was an epic 6 hour 'cheeseday' trying to get that stuff to curdle). It's currently in draining moulds but should be ready in a week or two. We're planning to eat some fresh & store some to dry out into the crumbly chevre type.

We did try asking a local lady who kept goats if we could go round and milk the goat and have fresh raw milk - it didn't work out tho - probably a good thing as apparently you have to suck on the teat to get the milk going

Not sure what's next up - I'd quite like to do a cheddar as I'm not keen on blue cheeses. The cream cheese looks good though :thumb:

I must dig out the photos and post them - cutting of the curds is great fun!

 

[Dunfie]

That sounds awesome JV. I really fancy making some more cheese so I will spread the cost of all the bits as I progress.

Where did you get your Penicillium Candidum and how much did it cost? The site I got my other stuff from have all the various bacteria but it seems to be a bit expensive and I'm not sure how long it would keep.

 

[ChrisG]

Hi m8,

Thats really interesting, I was wanting to try and make cheese too.

Made cottage cheese, which worked out well and very easy.

All you need is full cream milk and lemon juice.

Bring to the boil the milk then turn heat off, add lemon juice to curdle the milk and still gently side to side.

Lumps should form. Place contents in a muslin cloth and let drain.....there you go Cottage cheese.

Yours was very well documented.

 

[Vossy1]

Great posts D, fancy trying this myself :thumb:

 

[damfoose]

As one of my favorite Placticine charictors would say ..... Its made of CHEESE Grommit now grab the crackers....

Personally I recon cheese is an understated food group and I love the stuff.. I shall have to give this a go and see how it comes out..

 

[Vossy1]

Making the starter today, should be ready to give this a go tomorrow

 

[Vossy1]

Gotta give this cheese making malarky the big thumbs up, cheers D
We've made a non cultured soft cheese (cows milk and cream) and a cultured one (goats milk and cream) so far. Personally I found the cultured far tastier and more tart, it had a real bite to it. We split the cheeses in 2 and added salt and chive to one and nothing to the other. Need to reduce the salt slightly but the chive was lovely...a reet result

 

[llannige]

Good work there V. :thumb:

 

[kevwenno]

Hi folks, newbie here. Just a few things, on the second heating you give 72 degrees Farenheit which is apparently 22 Centigrade. Is that correct? as you use Centigrade in all your other temps.

Secondly, a brief summary of a ricotta method I found on another site.

Cover your whey and leave (in a non-reactive pan) for 24 hours to acidify.
Heat in a thick pan or double boiler (at about 80 Centigrade/180 Farenheit it will start to foam up) when it gets to 95C/203F remove from heat, DO NOT ALLOW TO BOIL as the hot foam will boil over, cover and allow to cool.

DO NOT STIR. You will now have a greeny-yellow liquid with little cloud-like bits in, this is your ricotta. You now have to seperate the two with as little disturbance as possible to reduce the eventual straining time.
If the ricotta has all sank, remove much ot the (now very low protein) whey which you can then feed to your chickens/goats etc. or throw away, pour the remainder into a muslin or fine cotton sheet, tie and hang over a bowl to drain for maybe 6-12 hours.
If the ricotta is floating about, fish it out with a fine seive then drain the remainder as above, and Hey Presto apparently.

If you have a cheese or wine/cider press I'm sure that would improve things too. I'm making a cider press for Cyser (Apple mead) -making using a strong box frame and a bottle-jack so I might try that. I also have this strange feeling I have seen some wierd recipe for making wine with whey, though I think If I were that desperate, I would try boiling my leather running shoes first.

Original article was on
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Ch ... tta_00.htm

Regarding the taste, maybe the Philly people use a different method to seperate initially. I know a woman in France who does her goats cheese using some chemical and has to near-boil it for about 15 minutes to seperate it. Her cheese has the same nice tang as Philly so maybe it's that. Adding seasoning and things can vastly improve the flavour too. I recently tried a Mint goats cheese from the Sunday market in Cambridge which was very strange but quite nice in small amounts so who knows.

The sour-cream is just that. cream soured by Lactic acid, so maybe they use that as well???

Great stuff, and more cheese please

 

[TheCheekyMonkey]

add a bit of grated pickled onion, and a tiny amount of mustard powder = yummy

 

[Dunfie]

Hi folks, newbie here. Just a few things, on the second heating you give 72 degrees Farenheit which is apparently 22 Centigrade. Is that correct? as you use Centigrade in all your other temps.

Its Farenheit for the curing of the milk. The book I used is from the US so I just copied that (infact the thermometer has a wee F on the screen if you squint your eyes :lol: ).

Thanks for posting the info in the ricotta as I certainly plan to get the old cheese making on the go again towards the autumn. My next ambition it to try making brie or camembert.

Gotta give this cheese making malarky the big thumbs up, cheers D
We've made a non cultured soft cheese (cows milk and cream) and a cultured one (goats milk and cream) so far. Personally I found the cultured far tastier and more tart, it had a real bite to it. We split the cheeses in 2 and added salt and chive to one and nothing to the other. Need to reduce the salt slightly but the chive was lovely...a reet result

Great stuff V. It really is very easy isn't it - you just need a bit of patience. I used the same method as the cream cheese but just using whole milk for cheese for a baked cheese cake. I'll post the recipe for that if anyone is interested as it really impressed friends at a dinner party.