The Basics Steps in How-to-Make-Goat-Cheese
In simple terms making-goat-milk-cheese is all about preserving the goats milk.
The three basic ways of achieving that are to remove the water from the milk, ferment the milk using bacteria and adding salt to the cheese.
1. Milk Pasteurization.
This primary step is used to destroy bacteria that is dangerous to people and also bacteria that can cause various uncontrolled activity.
When these bacteria are gone this allows far greater control over the process using the starter with far more predictable results.
That is where cleanliness comes in, bad hygiene creates dangerous and uncontrolled cheesemaking, and of course terrible cheese.
Fill the outer water part of your double boiler to the same level as the milk. How-to-make-goat-cheese is here.
Put your dairy thermometer in the cheesemaking pot and another thermometer in outer pot.
This way you can see what temp the water is. The water will act as an insulator and keep the milk at the right temp.
You can turn on the heat (when needed) to slowly raise the temp of the water without worrying that you might overheat the milk too quickly.
2. Starters.
The bacterial starters are used to initiate the cheese making process and this was described above
3. Rennet.
Adding rennet is used to set or curdle the milk into a solid curd.
After the rennet is added the milk is left to set for a period.
While you can get rennet in liquid or tablet form you will find that liquid type is the most practical. Rennet is also available as animal or vegetable.
4. Cutting.
The set or coagulated milk is cut into small pieces using a long knife. The sizes of the pieces depends on the cheese style you are making. Be gentle when cutting.
5. Stirring.
The set milk is stirred to facilitate the draining of the whey from the mixture. This results in curds and therefore a firmer cheese. Be gentle when stirring.
6. Heating.
Heating is performed to further assist whey removal and this results in curds and therefore firmer cheese.
7. Draining.
This is the drainage of whey from the curds. Place curd in your colander. All about how-to-make-goat-cheese.
8. Hooping.
The curds are gathered together and then placed into your cheese molds to make and shape the cheese.
9. Salting.
Depending on the cheese type, the curds are salted by either adding salt or immersing the curds into a saline brine type solution.
10. Pressing.
The curds are pressed into the moulds to expel whey and you use a cheese press for this.
11. Maturation.
The cheese are stored on racks in a temperature controlled environment to age and develop those great flavors.
All about home made goat cheese and also how-to-make-goat-cheese!