This subject that Francois brought up
in this thread is important for those of us that consume manufactured cheeses and for those of that use store bought pasteurized and homogenized milk for cheese making (like me). Starting this new thread as it may get buried/lost in that other thread.
A couple of quotes from Francois to set the scene:
UF stands for ultra filtration (of milk). It was devised in France in the late 70's for cam and brie. Basically it works for any high moisture cheese, you simply filter the milk to give you your final moisture, fat and protein. With this "retenate" you can make almost instant cheese by spraying rennet into it as molds are filled. It's a bit hard to visualize I know but with UF milk there is no whey, it's already been removed in the filtration process, so there is no draining, no drying etc. I have seen massive operations for feta and Camembert that just pump out cheese all day long like this. UF milk makes it cheaper because you can sell the permeate (leftovers) for whey protein, you need less milk to make the same volume of cheese (since you are binding more of the lost fat and protein up front rather than losing it in the whey) and labor is reduced. Downside? High moisture leads to poor shelf life and the taste just isn't there. There is a UF cam on the market in NZ that is flawlessly beautiful since it is set in the mold, but tastes like cardboard.
Modern cheese plants
may not even have UF technology, most milk processing plants are doing it now and cheese sites can just order in their milk to a specified concentration. Almost all milk in NZ is completely filtered and stripped of EVERYTHING and then reconstituted to make skim milk, 2% etc. Not sure if it's done like that in the rest of the world (I suspect it may be) but you can taste it in the milk. We have 8 major kinds of milk, from extra calcium to high protein. I did a milk tasting panel once and since I was the only foreigner, I was the only one who could taste the oxidized taste of the milk from all of the processing.
Some additional info here on
UF Milk Cheese making and
more here on process which interestingly says that because of UF milk's reduced volume, there is lower shipping costs such that it can be cost effectively imported into ie US from other countries displacing US milk producers.
So if using store bought Pasteurized, Homogenized and
Ultra-Filtrated cow's milk, is there anything extra special I do beside adding CaCl2 (other than use raw milk)?
