Lora the Cheesemaker

A few months ago when I was reading the book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" the author mentioned making her own cheese. I was really intrigued with the idea and looked online for the company she mentioned. I found the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company online and ordered their starter kit.

I got the kit a few days later and I was very excited to try it out! I even enlisted the girls' help and they were excited too. We poured in the milk, heated it up and stirred and added the acid and the rennet, we let it cook, and it kind of, sort of separated and then when we put it in the microwave, it just sort of turned to curd soup. Hmm. Not very inspiring.

The recipe very clearly states that you are not to use ultra-pasteurized milk, which I hadn't, but it also suggests trying a different brand if it doesn't work. So, I bought a different brand and tried again. Again, curd soup. Even soupier actually. I was supposed to be making mozzarella cheese and instead we had wasted two gallons of milk.

I emailed the company and said, "Help! I really want to do this, but I am having trouble!" They emailed back saying that dairies are getting away with heating the milk hotter and hotter and so the "regular" pasteurization is actually too hot to make cheese.

So, I went in search of a place where I could get milk straight from the cow. As luck would have it, we have an organic raw milk dairy just a few miles from our house. I went and bought the milk (and holy cow! -- no pun intended! -- it is amazing the prices they can get away with when it is organic!) and tried again. This time as I was getting everything ready, I was refreshing myself on the instructions and I read that the water you use to dissolve the rennet and the citric acid needs to be chlorine-free. I asked Kevin if he knew if we have chlorine in our water, and he said we probably did, so I used a bottle of drinking water instead.

I started to make the cheese and it all started working just like it was supposed to! Yea! I fact, it worked so well that the cheese was already stretching before I even got it out of the pot! A few minutes later I had a beautiful, shiny ball of mozzarella cheese! Wahoo! Finally!

I emailed the company and told them of my success and asked about the chlorine. They said that would definitely affect the rennet, so I am going to try again with a regular gallon of store bought milk and use drinking water instead and see how it goes.

We tried the cheese out with some crackers and it was good, and tonight we are going to have spaghetti and I am going to grate some to put on top! Yum!