Interactive lesson

Fresh cheese and brined cheese, step by step

Interactive lesson: from pasteurised milk to cheese — rennet, the clean-break test, cutting and draining, acid-set fresh cheese, sliceable cheese in brine and safety.

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The whole lesson as text

1. Milk and preparation

Soft cheese holds a lot of water, little acid and little salt, and it is eaten without cooking.

Milk and equipment — Only pasteurised milk for fresh and white cheese. Muslin, moulds and cloths are boiled after every use, not washed like ordinary tea towels.
Pasteurising — Hold the milk at 63 °C (145 °F) for 30 minutes, with a thermometer.
Cool to 32–34 °C — Keep the pan in warm water so the milk doesn't drop below 30 °C (86 °F). Cooler milk gives a soft curd that is hard to cut.
Calcium chloride and culture — For 10 L: 3 mL of 33 % calcium chloride in 50 mL of water, then mesophilic culture as directed. Wait 30–45 min at 32 °C.

Why: That makes it the riskiest dairy product in the house: listeria grows in it even in the fridge. Fresh cheese is made from pasteurised milk, with a culture and calcium chloride.

6–7 L of cow's milk gives roughly 1 kg of fresh cheese; sheep milk almost twice as much.
Fresh raw milk usually doesn't need calcium chloride. Follow the maker's instructions.

2. Rennet

Rennet is the enzyme that sets milk. Always read the maker's instructions first.

Measure the rennet — For 10 L of milk, 2–3 mL of standard-strength liquid rennet. Measure it with a 5 mL syringe without a needle.
Dilute without chlorine — In 20 times as much cold, boiled water, just before adding. Chlorine and chloramine in tap water destroy rennet; where the supply uses chloramine, use bottled water.
Through a slotted ladle — Pour the rennet through the ladle over the whole surface and stir up and down for 1 minute at most. Then stop the milk with the ladle.
Rest 40–60 minutes — Don't touch it again. Cover the pan with a blanket so the milk doesn't drop below 30 °C.

Why: Rennets differ in strength. For standard-strength liquid rennet the rough dose is 0.2–0.3 mL per 1 L of milk; too much rennet gives a rubbery, bitter cheese.

Keep liquid rennet in the fridge, in a dark bottle, tightly closed, and don't freeze it. When setting time with the same dose grows by a third, buy new rennet.
Home-made rennet from a dried stomach has an unknown strength and can carry bacteria. For safe, repeatable cheese use bought rennet. Junket tablets are too weak for cheese.