Re: Hometown: Learn to make cheese in Hinesburg

July 25, 2009

You don't need a class to do this, it's pretty easy if you get a good set of

instructions. Just look on the internet. You can buy the citric acid for

making mozarella from just about any vitamin retail site on the internet, and

need to get started pretty reasonably - there are even kits with full

instructions and enough supplies to make pounds of cheese for around $30.

Things I've found out the hard way - junket rennet is NOT the kind to curdle

milk, if they say cheesecloth, get the good kind, if they say butter cloth you

can't substitute cheesecloth. When cutting the curds, make sure the ones at

the bottom of the pot are small enough - or you'll get big lumps that don't firm

up when the rest is ready.

Other things - I've successfully made cottage cheese in a pot on the stove - no

need to do the water bath thing, just keep the burner very low. Hot buttered

egg noodles with melted cottage cheese and caramelized vidalia onins is to die

for and a very good way to use up the tons of cottage cheese you get from

starting with a whole gallon of milk! Ricotta is made from the whey and gets

the last of the milk solids, but they're small and go right through cheesecloth.

Whey makes EXCELLENT homemade bread. I freeze it in 1 cup amounts and thaw it

in a saucepan before adding it to my recipe in place of the milk. It's already

warm and that helps the yeast start growing.

>

>

> Beloved bovines Jemima, Patsy, ie and Flow supplied the raw milk

> for the cheese making class held by at her Family Cow

> Farmstand, a raw milk micro-dairy in Hinesburg. She taught a class of

> seven to make butter, yogurt, mozzarella and ricotta cheese in three-

> hours last week. It was the second sold-out cooking with raw milk

> course she gave this summer...

>

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