How to Make Cheese

Making your own cheese is easy and fun. With a few ingredients, equipment, and a good book, you are well on your way to making any kind of cheese you would like.

The following tips are also very helpful when making cheese. For complete Cheese making instructions you will need the book Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll.

Use non-chlorinated water, as chlorine can stop the action of rennet entirely. Spring or Distilled water works very well.

For the Lactose Intolerant, locally made soy milk can be a great alternative to animal milks for making soft cheeses. If you allergic to Cow's Milk, Goat's can be used to make a large variety of cheeses.

Completely milk-free and animal product-free soft cheese is able to be made from locally produced soy milk with the addition of Vegetarian Rennet Tablets or Liquid Vegetarian Rennet.

When using vegetable rennet, it’s important that you also use Calcium Chloride!

Pasteurizing your own milk is simple—so you should feel free to experiment with raw milk from a local dairy.

Choose your milk wisely! You need to do a few different things, for instance, if you’re using cow’s milk than if you’re using goat’s milk.

Avoid using calcium chloride when making mozzarella, because it may keep the cheese from stretching during the last stage of the process!

The use of cheese cultures/molds when appropriate can help tremendously by ‘killing’ unwanted molds and covering the cheese in a more pleasing color and outer texture. Ash can help the mold by neutralizing the cheese surface.

Keep your equipment clean and well sanitized to prevent unwanted mold growth in your kitchen. To clean your utensils, you can rinse in cold water then in hot water to prevent milk stone. To sterilize your counters and equipment (including molds), you may dip them or spray them with Sani-Clean. No rinsing is needed.

Choose your equipment wisely! Aluminum and cast-iron pots shouldn’t be considered in cheese making because of the reaction of acids with metallic salts. When absorbed by the curds, these salts will cause unpleasant metallic flavors. They will also corrode your pots.

Heat your milk slowly. Avoid direct use of the stove top to heat your milk. Use of a double boiler, hot water bath or warm setting on a slow cooker work very well in heating your milk.

Using a good digital thermometer which reads temperatures quickly and accurately is very helpful when heating your milk.