I’ve spent the whole of today making cheese…
Lots of milk
Heat it up with cheesy microbes
Rennet
Add the rennet
Leave it for an hour
Curds!
There’s a lot of covering and waiting
Mmmm boiled cheesecloth!
Whey
After most of the whey has been poured off
Draining the curds
Wrap tightly in cheesecloth
Compressed curds
Salted curds being packed into a mould
First short pressing
The beginnings of a cheese – more pressing required
Heating the whey
This is how you make ricotta
Draining and cooling the ricotta cheese
It does take a long time, but I do love the process. I have enough milk in the freezer to make another batch, which I’m going to tweak a little by using a bit less rennet to see how that affects the texture. In the mean time, we have fresh ricotta to enjoy and loads of whey to use in baking and to feed to the hens.
The Snail of Happiness 
nanacathy2
/ June 11, 2016Very very very impressed. Bet its delicious.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 11, 2016Trouble with hard cheese is you don’t find out whether it’s worked for ages. The ricotta made from the whey, however, has to be eaten within 7 days – what a shame!!
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Born To Organize
/ June 11, 2016I’m impressed! Wow. It looks wonderful.
I’ve seen rennet-less cheese in the stores. Is it important to the process?
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katechiconi
/ June 11, 2016Look at the colour of that milk, definitely full fat Jersey non-homogenised! People in the supermarket wouldn’t recognise your gorgeous stuff as milk, they’re used to a bland white creamless liquid. I could never access enough of it; sale of raw milk (or even barter equivalent to a sale) is illegal here. So my cultures died and my rennet stopped working, and it all got a bit too expensive to replace.
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katythenightowl
/ June 11, 2016This looks like a wonderful way to while away the day (although I’m sure there must have been hard work involved, really).
Hope you’re enjoying the fruits of your labour 🙂
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Wild Daffodil
/ June 11, 2016Wow! That looks wonderful – I too am most impressed.
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cambridgearomatherapy
/ June 13, 2016Am going to have to have a go soon. Got book, rennet is available locally, not much in the way of unpasturised organic milk locally so may be forced to go down the pasteurised route.
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The Snail of Happiness
/ June 14, 2016It’s worth keeping an eye on this, just in case… http://rawmilk.simkin.co.uk/index.html
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