Hey everyone,
I'm looking to start making and experimenting cheesemaking, but even more than milk-based cheeses I'm interested in making soy-, nut-, hemp- and perhaps even rice-based cheeses.
So far I've only found vegan cheese recipes that use agar and other coagulants such as salts, or recipes that either mix a bunch of ingredients to achieve flavour, but don't do any coagulation or fermentation. As there might not be anything wrong with these methods, I could imagine that you cannot achieve "real" good cheesy flavours with methods so different from traditional cheesemaking. Also, I don't find them interesting enough to have motivation for following any of those recipes.
I kinda know my biology, and recipes I know I can find in the forum.
1. How well do different rennet preparations from animals, vegetable and microbial sources (GMOs included) work on aforementioned vegetable proteins?
2. Where can I find good information on the cheesemaking bacteria and fungi? Scientific literature would be the best I guess.
3. Anyone tried making non-milk based cheeses (especially using rennet or acids?)
Short intro on myself as this is my first post: I'm a future professional brewer and cidermaker with plenty of vegan friends and massive potential market for good quality vegan cheese.
I did a search on the forum but couldn't find anything on this topic.
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1. How well do different rennet preparations from animals, vegetable and microbial sources (GMOs included) work on aforementioned vegetable proteins?
Not well for most unconcentrated proteins. I've had some success with milk/soy milk mixtures and rennin. I have also induced protein destabilization in various veg-based proteins by using polysaccharides and heat (basically, bind up proteins, then denature), or acid and heat (same idea). The commercial market is small, so there's very little literature
QuoteWhere can I find good information on the cheesemaking bacteria and fungi? Scientific literature would be the best I guess.
Please see https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,6489 (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,6489)
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3. Anyone tried making non-milk based cheeses (especially using rennet or acids?)
Yes, please see https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,3738 (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/topic,3738)
There are 1, maybe 2 other threads here about it. My favorite so far has been a soy/hemp hard cheese where I aged it out and sprayed with aspergillus a week before eating to introduce surface proteolysis. Flavor was a hybrid between fermented bean paste, camembert, and tomme. Enzymatic coagulation is going to be tough because veg proteins don't have that nice micelle structure of casein. Acid-induced protein destabilization is going to be easier. But even then, it's not straightforward because veg extractions often will contain stabilizers from the plant, such as starches and hydrocolloids, that help keep the protein in suspension.
Welcome!
Thanks linuxboy for the input!
I've had a couple of days to ponder on this veg cheese stuff. It seems like soy and hemp milks are the best options for their high protein. Hemp milk even has some unsaturated fats which spells 'flavour' to me. Next up I'll read a bit about the fats in milk and how they get mixed/trapped in the matrix of curdling milk proteins.
I tried curdling soy milk with acetic and it works. I get a ricotta-like structure from this and I figure it's as complex structure as you can get with just acid (and calcium which was already added in the milk by the producer). I'm thinking next up would be enzymatic proteolysis and magnesium chloride or magnesium sulfate as is used in firm tofu. Also, I want to make hemp milk (possibly try making soy milk later on as well) and try curlding it with these methods too.
I also tried inoculating some soy milk with kefir (the drink, not the grains), but I'm not sure if a) the kefir is alive and b) if kefir microbes can eat whatever sugar was added to this soy milk, although I would suppose so. I like the idea though of multiple fermentations so get closer to cheesy flavours. Therefore I am devoted to get (for those who know) some natto culture (Bacillus subtilis), ferment some soy and EAT it. Wish my tastebuds luck.
Well, the protein is just one part of it. The ratio of protein to fat is more important, as I think you noted. Normal milk has twice or more fat that, say, hard tofu has, and the moisture content of hard cheese like cheddar is far less than hard tofu. IIRC, it's something like 60% MFFB in tofu vs 35-40% MFFB for cheddar. So taking less fat, more moisture, you get a mass that will proteolyze really rapidly, and it will not give you desirable cheesey flavors.
Meaning you need to figure out how to get the PF balance right of your milk, likely by using nuts high in fat, or by blending.
Kefir should work fine, but I doubt it will give you a great flavor profile.. the yeasts in it are generally too strong. Natto culture is an interesting choice, but IMHO the enzymatic profile will be too different to really get cheese-like outcomes.
In my best trial, I made a lactic acid (custom culture blend) coagulated blend of milk, where PF was around 1.0, drained, dried to moisture of about 40%, and then aged, and then bloomy-fied the rind. It's essentially Dr Cow's approach, only I made it more interesting by using a custom culture blend and fusing eastern traditions of fermented soy with a French approach to cheesemaking.
Good luck!
The two links I've put into my bookmarks about the lactic acid bacteria are:
The Culture producers with their brand names:
https://cheeseforum.org/articles/wiki-manufactured-cheese-making-cultures/ (https://cheeseforum.org/articles/wiki-manufactured-cheese-making-cultures/)
Technical Sheets
https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,172.0.html (https://cheeseforum.org/forum/index.php/board,172.0.html)
Thanks Gürkan and linuxboy!
Linuxboy, was this cheese you talk about the soy/hemp one you mentioned in post #2 or something else (soy/milk?)?
I should read some about this PF stuff..
Same. I may have added some nut fat into it (cashew?), I don't remember now. I remember I tried to get it to match up to run-of-the mill summer milk, and the PF was 1.0
As for your question of how is fat trapped... think of a chain link fence. That fence is all the proteins linked up. Now take a snowball and throw it at the fence and imagine it sticks. That snowball is the fat. And put sheets and sheets of the chain link of top of each other, and you get curds.
Quote from: linuxboy on July 19, 2011, 07:54:33 PM
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The commercial market is small, so there's very little literature
Unfortunatlly in 35-40 years this will most likely be the cheese we will be eating given the current rise in energy costs and increasing shortage in food.
So better not give up on that research, you may strike gold ^-^
When that happens, I will be hoarding 3-week-old raw milk lactic bloomies and eyeing everyone suspiciously as I smuggle them into the city for the underground cheese trade. Vive le lait cru!
Veg cheese was alright, just not the same.
So the kefir started living in soy milk and the protein has curdled some, but breaks easily when the jar is shaken. The smell is perhaps a bit yeasty but not powerfully yeasty. The taste is not really yeasty and in fact not bad at all. There is a hint of apricot flavour, but as this soy milk had a bit of vanilla it doesn't say much. Visible coagulation happened after about two full days in room temps.
I should really buy a pH meter to understand soy protein coagulation better...
Ordered some rennet and will start playing around with that next week.
Ok so a little update;
Rennet combined with acetic does seem to coagulate the soy proteins some, but without heating up to 70-80C, the separation of the flocs from the liquid phase is poor.
I finally found some natto yesterday and now I'm seeing if it works nicely with soy milk. I definitely don't have a proper incubation system and my temps are mostly under the recommended 38-45C for natto. The stringyness of the natto goo is great! I wish I could get something like that to the soy milk. The smell and taste of natto are, judged after my first try, horrible. According to wikipedia this is due to pyrazine.
Next up: trying to coagulate soy milk after treating it with B. subtilis natto. Should buy nigari, lactose, some actual cheese microbes, incubation chamber.
I just checked on the soy milk with natto and suddenly the protein had coagulated! It took ~12h, but the visible change happened within the time frame of an hour or so. Looks better than acetic + heat or kefir induced coagulation. Not much natto taste either, but I put them in the fridge and will try the taste again tomorrow. If only I had nigari now..
The natto-fermented soy milk turned out to be really quite interesting. The partly lysed protein was really quite stretchy, even mozzarella-like. The flavour and smell was mild but distinctively natto. The mass would soak up water and lose its stretch when put into salted brine. I'm planning to try making some more with coconut fat mixed before fermenting.
I tried cooking the resultant mass in the oven (as a pizza topping), but the stretch was completely lost with heat. I'm trying to find some nigari to try if it can give heat stability (tofu made with nigari stays together under heat). Also, we'll see if some added fat will help with melt properties.
I'm also trying to cultivate a buttermilk meso starter and then try combinations of soy milk, added calcium, sugar, coconut fat, meso and natto to see if one or the other works better. I just don't have that much time in the next two weeks or so.