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Making Cheese

Yes, you can make excellent cheese using store-bought milk!

Store-bought milk is homogenized, which means that the cream has been mechanically broken up into microscopic pieces. Homogenizing milk also changes the protein. Unless the cheese maker allows for this, the milk will not make a decent curd for hard cheese. To allow for the processing of store-bought milk, calcium chloride needs to be added before adding rennet to the cheese mixture. Adding calcium chloride will help restore the altered milk protein and help in getting a quality curd.

To make cheese, bacteria ("starter") must also be added to acidify the milk so that the rennet will work, and to help with curing. Cultured buttermilk can be used as a mesophilic starter (it likes room temperature), and yogurt can be used as a thermophilic starter (it prefers warmer temperatures). If you prefer, you can purchase actual thermophilic and mesophilic starters from cheese supply companies instead. Click here for instructions to make your own mesophilic and thermophilic cultures.

I highly recommend that beginning cheese makers visit David Fankhauser's web site: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htm. He guides you through the process of making cheese starting with simpler cheeses and building up to the more difficult types.