For a do-it-yourselfer like me, who has a lot of fresh milk on hand (3 gallons in the fridge today), I have many choices of what to make given some time and special ingredients. When planning what cheese to try to make next, I reviewed my cookbooks and the internet and found that by oversimplifying a 11oo year old art, I could divide cheeses up into three main categories:
Fresh cheeses – 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 in as little as a half hour and as long as a day, with some variations.
Hard cheeses – you need to press the curds to force the water out to make hard cheese. Then you let the cheese sit for days, months, years to allow it to age. Generally you need about 50 degrees F and 85 percent humidity, which is a problem for me. I have a root cellar that is humid, but that temperature will destroy the vegetables stored there. I could try to age the cheese in the cheese drawer of my second fridge, but it probably will be too cold, and not humid enough.
Moldy cheeses – Cheeses like brie and camembert are aged like hard cheeses, but you don’t press them to force the water out of the curd. 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 (square slabs of maple) and you flip it – and then let 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 smaller and shorter wheel within the form. Not pressing the curds allows the center to stay soft. Mold is applied to the surface with a sprayer, the cheese grows a fuzzy coat that develops for months as it ages.
I’m just getting into this – really just want to try it, but I don’t have a cheese cave to maintain the cheeses for months at the proper temperature and humidity. My husband suggests we find an old fridge and run it at a warm setting and line the bottom of the unit with a pan of water. I think we’re going to try that.
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