Just made my first cheese!

[arcadiamom]

Hi everyone!

I just made my first batch of cheese, and it's in the press now.  I made a farm house cheddar cheese.   

I found this forum because I forgot to add the salt before pressing, so I followed the wonderful advice of the experts here and placed the curds back in a kettle, warmed them to 90 degrees and pressed the cheese again (after breaking it apart the first time and salting it!)   .

I just wanted to say thanks for this forum!

Sue

[OudeKaas]

Welcome, Sue!

I am a new cheesemaking hobbyist myself, and this place has been a fantastice resource. Hope that you continue to find it to be as friendly and useful as I have.

Post some pics and updates on your maiden effort sometime, would love to see them.

[zenith1]

Hi Sue - I would like to say welcome also. I think that you picked a good type of hard cheese to start with. If I might make a suggestion. From my own early experience I know how tempting it is to jump off and try to recreate all the wonderful cheese that you love. I think it is better to make one type a number of times until you really have a grasp on the process and what is going on at any one point in the make and how a change in one thing, time, temp, quantity of starter culture or amount of rennet affects your final product. Then start with another type and you will be better able to correct any problems that may pop up. Congratulations on your experience!

[OudeKaas]

I also tried a cheddar as my first hard cheese - based mostly on the 'traditional' recipe from Ricki Carroll's book. I really don't know if it was such a good idea! Hm, let's see . . . want to start a new phase of this hobby . . . let's pick the longest and most labor-intenstive process, requiring the heaviest pressing weight, and a long aging period! I had fun but in retrospect I might have gone a different route.

However, with patience, at just over 4 months in now, I have something that is edible and at least vaguely in the cheddar-ish family. My tasting notes say "Moderately interesting, with a sort of neutral cheesy taste followed by a bit of cheddar-y acidity. A little drier and less elastic than anticipated, and has a little bit of whitish spots in it something like a Parm (?)"

Being new to the hobby, I'm still at the point where I'm thrilled to make reasonably decent cheese of any kind, and people seem to like this effort (the plate in the pic was empty in short order). So hopefully this is a glimpse of what you can look forward to . . .

[ArnaudForestier]

Welcome, Sue.  I'll second Brand's approbation of this board and community; a fantastic group of people, really encouraging and helpful.  Congratulations on getting your first effort down.

Brand - wonderful looking cheese!  I'll bet it was gone, fast.  It seems a lot of us are eager to down our maiden efforts.  Congrats to you, as well.