Author Topic: Help choose a cheese to master for beginner  (Read 4530 times)

Offline awakephd

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Re: Help choose a cheese to master for beginner
« Reply #15 on: February 13, 2015, 11:50:57 PM »
Francisco,

This forum certainly provides great recipes, though sometimes you have to "extract" them from make notes -- e.g., the post may give the actual time when different steps were performed, rather than the amount of time needed between steps. And sometimes the make notes may make some assumptions about what people already know about that make.

I currently have 3 books with recipes, all of which I recommend:

Ricki Carroll's Home Cheese Making - doesn't include details such as pH or flocc targets, but I've found her recipes nearly always work for me -- though they may not lead to exactly the kind of cheese I was hoping. The one thing that doesn't work for me is her 30-minute mozzarella.

Debra Amrein-Boyes, 200 Easy Homemade Cheese recipes - again, no pH or flocc targets, but I've had good results with these recipes, especially with some tweaks suggested on this forum. One thing often mentioned is that her psi targets for pressing seem high by a factor of 10.

Gianaclis Caldwell's Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking - a great book for understanding more about what is actually happening in the making of the cheese, and how the different variables lead to different results. Not a lot of different recipes, but rather a solid foundation of recipe-types from which the cheesemaker can try variations.

With pasteurized milk, any of them are "safe" in terms of concerns about food safety -- so long as you don't get late or early blowing, which are pretty distinctive if they happen. (I've never experienced either thus far, about 30-35 cheeses into the hobby.) If you are using raw milk, you are supposed to age for at least 60 days for food safety. If your milk is ultra-pasteurized (high heat, short time), forget it -- it won't work for much of anything. But if it is regular pasteurized, or better yet low-temp-long-time pasteurized, and non-homogenized, it should work very nicely indeed for anything you want to make.
-- Andy

Offline Al Lewis

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Re: Help choose a cheese to master for beginner
« Reply #16 on: February 14, 2015, 04:14:14 PM »
Couldn't agree more Andy.  I have those three books and they are the staple I use for recipes.  You can also find Rikki Carrol's recipes on her site but you will need to do a little research as she quotes using sachets of her product rather than stating outright what it is.  You can find them here.  Your info doesn't give a location but if you have a Kindle you can download a short book titled Homemade Cheese Recipes from Echo Bay Books for 99 cents U.S.  Good basic recipes for many of the more popular cheeses including those you have mentioned.  Once you get into it You may want to pick up Mary Karlin's Artisan Cheese Making at Home.
« Last Edit: February 14, 2015, 04:24:17 PM by Al Lewis »
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francisco

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Re: Help choose a cheese to master for beginner
« Reply #17 on: February 14, 2015, 05:08:27 PM »
Thanks for the tips, again :)

I'm actually currently reading Gianaclis Caldwell's book, I choose that one due to the fact that it seemed the most "scientific" one, since I like to really understand how things work.

Regarding the milk, I'm in CA, US and I have easy access to this: http://strausfamilycreamery.com/products/item/organic-whole-milk
I think it meets the requirements mentioned above, so that's great.

Offline Al Lewis

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Re: Help choose a cheese to master for beginner
« Reply #18 on: February 14, 2015, 05:13:55 PM »
That milk looks perfect.
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