Author Topic: Cheese Making Recipes All Similar  (Read 2535 times)

Cheese Head

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Cheese Making Recipes All Similar
« on: June 21, 2008, 08:14:42 PM »
There are many cheese making recipes on this forum that are very similar. Yes some use thermophilic starter culture and some have slightly different temperatures and removing whey early or late and some have different ways of making rind or not and some need Lipase for added taste which all lead to slightly different cheese outcomes. But the bulk of the recipes are very similar, use mesophilic culture, add rennet, cook curds etc. Am I missing something here?

So they mostly start from the same base, how do we get to a bigger range of cheese types? Two routes I can think of:
  • Buy different manufactured specialty cultures, but there are not that many available via cheese supply stores, and possibly many specaility cheee are proprietary.
  • Use small pieces of store bought cheese as special culture.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2008, 08:16:38 PM by Cheese Head »

DaggerDoggie

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Re: Cheese Making Recipes All Similar
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2008, 08:30:10 PM »
I am thinking a lot of the difference has to do with the subtleties of aging.  There are a ton of variations here.

Although I have yet to purchase anything from them, New England Cheese Making Supply, http://www.cheesemaking.com/ has a lot of different cultures and bacterial additives.  Some of them very expensive.

I like the idea of growing a culture from a good store-bought cheese.  Tried it once with blue and it, so far, seems to have worked well.

Perhaps that should be a new forum topic: Growing Cultures.

reg

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Re: Cheese Making Recipes All Similar
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2008, 12:30:30 PM »
morning guys, finally a morning when i can get caught up on whats happening.

Ch most of the cheese recipies start out the same but from what i can understand a few very small changes/techniques have profound outcomes on the final flavours of the cheese. a couple come to mind, PH standing out in my opinion. others being washed curd as in Gouda, washed rinds and so on. i'm quite sure that the natural bacteria/yeasts found in your locality has some sort of effect on the final outcome of the cheese. i remember a few years ago when i made a starter for sour dough bread using local whole grains of wheat, it turned out fairly strong, good but strong. i really do believe all these little things add up to the big differences in the final cheese.

the other thing that i believe is a large factor is the pasturage that the animal has to graze on. a heard grazing in alpine meadows will forage on totally different grasses that an animal that forages on the plains for instance. the milk will be two completely different qualities or compounds or whatever they may be called. i think the type of animal itself has a lot to do with final outcome of the product. that is why we have so many differnt names of cheeses, so many differnt areas of the world produce there own specific style/type. for instance just look at mozz from regular cattle types compared to buffalo mozz, no comparison.

just a few of my thoughts anyway

reg

DaggerDoggie

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Re: Cheese Making Recipes All Similar
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2008, 01:23:48 PM »
Good point about the forage that animals eat.  Growing up on a farm, when we would first start feeding the cows hay silage (that stuff stinks as if ferments in the silo and produces CO which every few years kills some local farmer) you could also taste it in the milk.  I can see why artisan cheese makers prefer grass-fed milk.  Also, the milk from different breeds of cows tastes very different.  Jersey milk is high in butterfat and has a slight yellow hue to it, while the ever-popular Holstein milk contains less fat and is very white.  They are more popular since they produce a larger volume of milk.  Not the best INHO, but they do make more money.  I got to get busy and befriend a local farmer. ::)

I think most of our store-bought-mike is homogenized in so many ways, it is more consistent, not necessarily a. good thing