Adventures in cheesemaking - part 1

The path from enthusiastic cheesophile to master cheese maker is a long and winding one, a path which often doubles back on itself or stops to admire the view (and presumably eat some cheese).

As a beginner cheesemaker, Ian's cheeses so far are best described as... experimental.  We've had a white cheese that turned blue (due to cross-contamination of molds), a brie that melted in on itself (because not enough liquid was drained out), and several over-salting mishaps. As far as I was concerned, it didn't matter what the cheese looked like as long as it tasted good. And it did.  The runny brie was perfect for drizzling onto home-made bread, the white-cheese-turned-blue was just the right combination of blue strength and white creaminess.  Too-salty cheese works well stirred into a risotto (in moderation).

However, Ian is a perfectionist.  And a dribbly brie is apparently Not Acceptable.


Runny brie- what you get when you don't have a cheese press!

Luckily Ian has a good friend and fellow scientist who, after several years of dedicated cheese making, has achieved the status of 'person we know with the most experience of making cheese'.

When he's not making cheese, 'Mr Cheese' as I shall call him, or C for short (because I haven't asked if he wants to be namechecked) leads his own research group at Cardiff University.  I have decided that the scientific mind is both a blessing and a curse for cheese making.  Cheese making is after all one great experiment.  It involves following a protocol, initiating reactions, tweaking parameters and ultimately evaluating the results (yum!).  So to a certain extent scientists are perfectly suited to this.  If the protocol specifies that you set the curds by heating them to 32oC, then a scientist will likely whip out the digital thermometer until the required temperature is reached.  If the instructions say 'cut the curds into 2 cm cubes', then you can probably use them in a game of cheese Jenga.  Unfortunately the cheese making process also involves a certain amount of non-scientific factors, which can be generally termed 'winging it'.  In part this is due to the fact that to make many (although not all) cheeses you have to work with living organisms.  Bacteria provide the 'starter culture' and work together with the rennet (an enzyme) to set the cheese.  They also develop the flavour during maturation.  Moulds (yeast) are also used in certain cheeses: Penicillium camemberti makes the white mold on the surface of camembert and brie, while Penicillium roqueforti is used for making blue cheese.


Ian's 'oh-it's-turned-blue' cheese on home-made oatcakes

Unfortunately any scientist that has worked with living organisms can tell you that they can throw even the most perfectly executed protocol into disarray. A cheese can basically be thought of as a miniature farm, because the final taste and texture is ultimately dependant on how well your bacteria and mold 'livestock' have multiplied in your care, and whether any unwanted organisms have invaded your cheese 'field'.  Unfortunately microorganisms are not the most predictable livestock to raise, more like teeny-tiny pandas than sheep (well, ish), and this is basically because their growth is influenced by so many external factors.  Temperature, humidity, salinity, consistency (or lack thereof) of all of the above can all affect the extent to which bacteria and molds develop.  I should know, I spent three and a half years messing around with bacteria, ending up with a PhD which would have been more accurately titled 'Things Which Do Not Work'.

Consistency is the goal for any cheesemaker, and the most difficult to achieve in a small scale.

When we arrived at C's house in Cardiff it was immediately apparent that here was a man who takes his cheese making seriously.  A dedicated fridge in the garage houses a large number of maturing varieties.  A large gouda encased in yellow wax, several smaller camemberts, a few blues, a few bries.  A portable wine fridge had been repurposed to monitor temperature and humidity for ripening. There was a home-made cheese press and several large plastic boxes of cheese making 'kit'.  As I said, serious cheese. I was slightly concerned that there was not enough room in our entire house, never mind our galley kitchen, for this level of dedication.

While I went off for the day to learn the art of hedge laying (something which I hope to be able to put into practice, as soon as we gain some hedges), Ian and C spent the day making camembert, ricotta, mozzarella, and a goat's milk 'chevre'.   When I returned that afternoon they were in full flow with almost all the cheeses part-way through production.

Watching any craftsperson making their creation is fascinating, and so it was here, if slightly messier. Confidently, and with admirable patience, C guided Ian through the process from milk to cheese, answering a battery of questions at each stage.  On an increasingly crowded kitchen work surface the nascent camembert and chevre sat in two large pans; periodically C would lean over with a spatula and lift out a divet of setting curd which was inspected and passed around for discussion.  More questions were asked and notes were made. 

The curds were left to drain in their moulds and mozzarella-making began.  Mozzarella manufacture is wonderful to watch; the set curds are worked like Play-Doh, folded over and over until they become silky smooth and stretchy, breaking to reveal an almost fibrous structure. Quite possibly the best thing about Mozzarella is that it is edible immediately.  Blink and you would have missed it!

From my perch at the side of the kitchen (glass of wine in hand) I learnt that cleanliness during cheese making is as much about protecting the cheese from other molds, as it is from protecting it from 'germs'.  I learnt that ultimately, cheese making does necessarily involve a certain amount of 'just winging it', but that this is OK as long as you know the boundaries within which it is acceptable for 'it' to be wung.  And as I watched Ian, bright-eyed with excitement (and cheese consumption), filling the umpteenth page with scribbled notes, I realised that we too would soon be acquiring a dedicated cheese fridge, and I wondered whether it was acceptable to stick a bottle of wine in a repurposed wine cooler-come-cheese maturer.

I won't know exactly what Ian has learnt for several weeks, when the first of the Cambridge cheeses make it through production.  But Big Plans are already being made... anyone fancy some cheese?