Dairy Adventure: Cheese

Another one of my goals this summer was to make cheese. Mozzarella is a cheese I pretty much always have in our fridge and enjoy pretty frequently. I thought it would be interesting to learn how to make it.

Just as it was helpful when I made butter, the book Home Dairy with Ashley English was an amazing resource when making cheese. The author lists lots of different cheeses and provides step by step visuals to guide you. Mozzarella is considered an easy cheese to make at home because it doesn't require any aging. I was shocked at how easy it was.

The key with mozzarella and any cheese in general is beginning with high quality milk.
The challenge with mozzarella is the milk can't be pasteurized. Because we live in Seattle, I was able to find local, raw milk at a market near our home and used that. You can't make mozzarella with the milk you buy from the grocery store...it simply won't work. (Unless your grocery store sells raw or minimally pasteurized milk.)

You need a few special ingredients and tools to transform your milk - rennet, citric acid powder, and a thermometer. You bring your milk and citric acid to about 86 degrees, add the rennet and some water and bring that to 104 degrees. Almost instantly when I added the rennet, the milk began forming curds and whey. Then I separated the curds into a bowl, warmed them a bit in the microwave, and kneaded the cheese. After a few minutes, it was ready.

I enjoyed a sliver and put the rest in our fridge. Tonight we're having grilled pizzas with homemade mozzarella and roasted veggies. I'm looking forward to that!

I probably won't regularly make my cheese. I enjoyed learning how to do it and was pretty amazed with how the cheese turned out. The challenge is the cost. Raw milk is not cheap ($6.99 per half gallon) and the amount of mozzarella I made with a 1/2 gallon of milk was not considerable. I may make it again if the mozzarella was the highlight of the meal, but for day to day eating and enjoying, I'll stick to the great and inexpensive mozzarella I get from my trusty Costco. The taste is very similar.

I'm hoping to try homemade ricotta next. Supposedly that is very simple to make and tastes dramatically different than anything you can buy at a store. I'll let you know when and if I try it!

Dairy Adventure: Butter

This summer I added to my list of goals that I wanted to try making my butter. I'm not sure exactly why...I'd read a few blog posts about people making their own and to be honest, I was intrigued. I've made yogurt a few times now and it is so easy and much more delicious than anything you can buy in a store. I hoped butter would be equally as wonderful!

I checked out Home Dairy with Ashley English from our local library. It is an amazing resource and a book I definitely have on my list to add to my personal collection. In this book, Ashley carefully walks you through each step of the butter making process with careful notes and very helpful pictures.

Butter is made from heavy cream. Basically, you whip it at a very high speed for about 9 minutes and all of a sudden you have butter! My Kitchen Aid mixer did all the work! One tip I read online was to drape a kitchen towel around your mixer as you whip the cream, otherwise you have quite a mess. After a few minutes, the cream separates and you have butter and buttermilk. I poured my buttermilk into a Mason jar and will use it to make pancakes. All you do next is rinse your butter, mix it with a bit of salt and store it.

The taste is unrivaled. We did a taste comparison with the butter we had in our fridge and the fresh butter I made - Cliff was shocked at how he could really tell the difference. I hope to never buy butter again!

 Stay tuned...I'll share about my mozzarella adventures soon!