fresh cheeses -
you have your fresh cheeses that people like me start making when you are awash in milk from a family cow. making cheese is just a nice way to store milk. So ricotta, mozzarella, cottage cheese, sour cream, and neufchatel are all nice and quick cheeses – they don’t have to sit somewhere for months ripening.
you simply heat the milk slightly, add a little rennet, let it sit while it makes curds, cut the curds, then strain the whey out, add salt – and mostly you have cheeses, with some variations.
hard cheeses – cheddar, edam, gouda
if you want hard cheeses, you need to press the cheese to force the water out – and you let it sit for days, months, years to allow it to age. Sometimes you coat it in wax, sometimes cheesecloth and wax
moldy cheeses – brie, camembert
these are aged like hard cheeses, but you don’t press them to force the water out. Instead, you sandwich the cheese in a cheese mold/form, between two bamboo matts, like the ones you use to roll sushi, and then between 2 cheese boards and you flip it – and you keep letting it sit for a bit, then flip it again. Some of the water drains out – so it goes from the curd filling the form, to being a 1 1/2″ disk within the form. This keeps the center soft. Also you spray mold on the outside and it grows a fuzzy coat and let it sit for months
the problem for me is that I don’t have a cheese cave – the second two types of cheese mostly need a 50 degree F constant temp with high humidity. Bob suggests we find an old fridge and run it warm.
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