The Modern Cheesemaker

The Modern Cheesemaker shows you how to make 18 cheeses, from the rich and gooey, to the wonderfully stinky, and all the cheeseboard favourites – including simple, fresh cheeses such as mozzarella and ricotta, working up to salty and versatile halloumi, feta and paneer, perfect, melting Swiss cheese, through to aged Cheddar and Brie. Starting from the very basics of the making process, with a guide to milk types and the seasonal nature of cheese, The Modern Cheesemaker will deepen your understanding of this essential ingredient and its production. The equipment you will need is thoroughly explained and readily available and by following the easy-to-use instructions and Morgan McGlynn’s expert tips, you’ll soon learn how to become your own artisan cheesemaker. To reap the rewards of your hard work, there are over 40 recipes for delicious cheese-based dishes to make, along with flavouring cheese and suggested accompaniments.

The Modern Cheesemaker shows you how to make 18 cheeses, from the rich and gooey, to the wonderfully stinky, and all the cheeseboard favourites – including simple, fresh cheeses such as mozzarella and ricotta, working up to salty and versatile halloumi, feta and paneer, perfect, melting Swiss cheese, through to aged Cheddar and Brie. Starting from the very basics of the making process, with a guide to milk types and the seasonal nature of cheese, The Modern Cheesemaker will deepen your understanding of this essential ingredient and its production. The equipment you will need is thoroughly explained and readily available and by following the easy-to-use instructions and Morgan McGlynn’s expert tips, you’ll soon learn how to become your own artisan cheesemaker. To reap the rewards of your hard work, there are over 40 recipes for delicious cheese-based dishes to make, along with flavouring cheese and suggested accompaniments.

Including more than 35 step-by-step recipes from the Black Sheep School of Cheesemaking Most DIY cheesemaking books are hard to follow, complicated, and confusing, and call for the use of packaged freeze-dried cultures, chemical additives, and expensive cheesemaking equipment. For though bread baking has its sourdough, brewing its lambic ales, and pickling its wild fermentation, standard Western cheesemaking practice today is decidedly unnatural. In The Art of Natural Cheesemaking, David Asher practices and preaches a traditional, but increasingly countercultural, way of making cheese—one that is natural and intuitive, grounded in ecological principles and biological science. This book encourages home and small-scale commercial cheesemakers to take a different approach by showing them: • How to source good milk, including raw milk; • How to keep their own bacterial starter cultures and fungal ripening cultures; • How make their own rennet—and how to make good cheese without it; • How to avoid the use of plastic equipment and chemical additives; and • How to use appropriate technologies. Introductory chapters explore and explain the basic elements of cheese: milk, cultures, rennet, salt, tools, and the cheese cave. The fourteen chapters that follow each examine a particular class of cheese, from kefir and paneer to washed-rind and alpine styles, offering specific recipes and handling advice. The techniques presented are direct and thorough, fully illustrated with hand-drawn diagrams and triptych photos that show the transformation of cheeses in a comparative and dynamic fashion. The Art of Natural Cheesemaking is the first cheesemaking book to take a political stance against Big Dairy and to criticize both standard industrial and artisanal cheesemaking practices. It promotes the use of ethical animal rennet and protests the use of laboratory-grown freeze-dried cultures. It also explores how GMO technology is creeping into our cheese and the steps we can take to stop it. This book sounds a clarion call to cheesemakers to adopt more natural, sustainable practices. It may well change the way we look at cheese, and how we make it ourselves.

A guide to cheese making history, technique, artistry, and business strategies.

Set on a small Irish dairy farm, this tender and funny debut novel follows two lost souls as they try to carve out new lives amid a colorful cast of characters reminiscent of those in the hit film Waking Ned Divine. Abby has been estranged from the family farm since her rebellious mother ran off with her when she was a small child. Kit is a burned out New York stockbroker who's down on his luck. But that's all about to change, now that he and Abby have converged on the farm just in time to help Corrie and Fee, two old cheesemakers in a time of need. Full of delightful and quirky characters--from dairy cows who only give their best product to pregnant, vegetarian teens to an odd collection of whiskey-soaked men and broken-hearted women who find refuge under Corrie and Fee's roof--BLESSED ARE THE CHEESEMAKERS is an irresistible tale about taking life's spilled milk and turning it into the best cheese in the world.

Just a century ago, cheese was still a relatively regional and European phenomenon, and cheese making techniques were limited by climate, geography, and equipment. But modern technology along with the recent artisanal renaissance has opened up the diverse, time-honored, and dynamic world of cheese to enthusiasts willing to take its humble fundamentals—milk, starters, coagulants, and salt—and transform them into complex edibles. Artisan Cheese Making at Home is the most ambitious and comprehensive guide to home cheese making, filled with easy-to-follow instructions for making mouthwatering cheese and dairy items. Renowned cooking instructor Mary Karlin has spent years working alongside the country’s most passionate artisan cheese producers—cooking, creating, and learning the nuances of their trade. She presents her findings in this lavishly illustrated guide, which features more than eighty recipes for a diverse range of cheeses: from quick and satisfying Mascarpone and Queso Blanco to cultured products like Crème Fraîche and Yogurt to flavorful selections like Saffron-Infused Manchego, Irish-Style Cheddar, and Bloomy Blue Log Chèvre. Artisan Cheese Making at Home begins with a primer covering milks, starters, cultures, natural coagulants, and bacteria—everything the beginner needs to get started. The heart of the book is a master class in home cheese making: building basic skills with fresh cheeses like ricotta and working up to developing and aging complex mold-ripened cheeses. Also covered are techniques and equipment, including drying, pressing, and brining, as well as molds and ripening boxes. Last but not least, there is a full chapter on cooking with cheese that includes more than twenty globally-influenced recipes featuring the finished cheeses, such as Goat Cheese and Chive Fallen Soufflés with Herb-Citrus Vinaigrette and Blue Cheese, Bacon, and Pear Galette. Offering an approachable exploration of the alchemy of this extraordinary food, Artisan Cheese Making at Home proves that hand-crafting cheese is not only achievable, but also a fascinating and rewarding process.

The key to becoming a successful artisan cheesemaker is to develop the intuition essential for problem solving and developing unique styles of cheeses. There are an increasing number of books on the market about making cheese, but none approaches the intricacies of cheesemaking science alongside considerations for preparing each type of cheese variety in as much detail as Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking. Indeed, this book fills a big hole in the market. Beginner guides leave you wanting more content and explanation of process, while recipe-based cookbooks often fail to dig deeper into the science, and therefore don’t allow for a truly intuitive cheesemaker to develop. Acclaimed cheesemaker Gianaclis Caldwell has written the book she wishes existed when she was starting out. Every serious home-scale artisan cheesemaker—even those just beginning to experiment—will want this book as their bible to take them from their first quick mozzarella to a French mimolette, and ultimately to designing their own unique cheeses. This comprehensive and user-friendly guide thoroughly explains the art and science that allow milk to be transformed into epicurean masterpieces. Caldwell offers a deep look at the history, science, culture, and art of making artisan cheese on a small scale, and includes detailed information on equipment and setting up a home-scale operation. A large part of the book includes extensive process-based recipes dictating not only the hard numbers, but also the concepts behind each style of cheese and everything you want to know about affinage (aging) and using oils, brushes, waxes, infusions, and other creative aging and flavoring techniques. Also included are beautiful photographs, profiles of other cheesemakers, and in-depth appendices for quick reference in the preparation and aging room. Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking will also prove an invaluable resource for those with, or thinking of starting, a small-scale creamery. Let Gianaclis Caldwell be your mentor, guide, and cheering section as you follow the pathway to a mastery of cheesemaking. For the avid home hobbyist to the serious commercial artisan, Mastering Artisan Cheesemaking is an irreplaceable resource.

"Packed with simple methods, clear recipes, and straightforward guidelines, The Art of Plant-Based Cheesemaking arms the reader with a clear understanding of the processes for creating authentic cultured, non-dairy, plant-based cheese using traditional (dairy) cheesemaking methods."--