Lose Your Cheese-Making Virginity to Chevre

I am involved in many high-risk activities. Not so much doing drugs or jumping off cliffs as fermenting, pottery and gardening – those hobbies that have a high failure rate and that you just have to accept as part of the game. Cheese making is like that, and even now, after many years of my journey, I sometimes end up with blown cheese, or one that does not develop properly, or one that I open after six long months of aging, only to find that it tastes like an old cheese. vomit. Sometimes the cause can be prevented, such as environmental factors; and sometimes it is not, such as milk, rennet, or seeding are disabled.

This is why chevre (fresh goat cheese) is the perfect first cheese for beginner cheesemakers. If you can get to Trader Joe, you can get milk. This culture is widely available and it almost always works. The results are very malleable and the whole process does not take long. Mostly this happens without the participation of the hands. Do I need to continue?

If your inner nerd needs success to stay motivated, this soft goat cheese is Richard Simmons of the curd world, offering endless support. Use Gavin Weber’s recipe ; Gavin hasn’t let me down yet.

Chevre Gavin Webber

Ingredients:

• 1 gallon of goat milk is most likely to be obtained in the form of 4 liters of Summerhill goat milk at Trader Joe’s. This milk is not subject to UHT.
• 1 sachet Chevre culture from New England Cheesemaking
• Dissolve 2 drops of calcium chloride in 1 tablespoon of distilled water
• Dissolve 2 drops of rennet in 1 tablespoon of distilled water.
• 1% salt by weight

Equipment ( recommendations for choosing equipment can be found in our buying guide ):

• Pot 6 liters or more
• measuring spoons
• Thermometer
• Gauze
• Stainless steel colander
• A long-handled broom or other stick-like object that you can hang a bag of cottage cheese on.

Set up your environment

As with all cheese, cleanliness is inextricably linked to cottage cheese. Make sure that the pot, countertop, all necessary and used utensils – from measuring spoons to a thermometer, faucet and sink – are all freshly washed and disinfected with white vinegar or a disinfectant solution. Keep a spray bottle of vinegar and clean towels nearby.

Once you get started, you don’t need to wash the dishes or anything else in the kitchen, as this can contaminate your cheese with drips. If you have enzymes, cover or move them so they don’t contaminate the cheese. You need a sterile environment.

Heat up the milk

We’re only going to heat the milk to 77℉ so we don’t need to use a steamer, a fairly large stainless steel pan with a thermometer attached. Thermometers are tricky intruders, so if your thermometer won’t stay in place when attached to the pot, use some folded paper on the outside of the pot to stabilize it. Make sure the thermometer is not touching the bottom of the pan; the tip should be about an inch above the bottom. Consider where you put your spoon and make sure it’s sanitized as well.

Shake the milk bottles well to homogenize the fat in the milk, then pour the milk into a saucepan. Put the pot on medium to low heat because it won’t take long to reach 77℉ and stir.

Add crops and mature

Once the temperature reaches 77℉, turn off the heat but do not move the pan. Open the culture bag and make sure it’s not lumpy – it should behave like grains of salt and move freely. Sprinkle the entire bag on top of the milk, then cover the pot and set aside for five minutes. This is called “rehydration” and allows the culture to absorb the milk; when we stir the culture, it does not stick together and is thoroughly mixed.

Remove the lid after five minutes and stir the milk in a circular motion for a full minute. This will include culture. Check milk temperature; we want to make sure it is within a few degrees of 77℉. If the temperature exceeds 80℉, remove it from the burner immediately. If the temperature is below 72℉, heat it up to 77℉.

Once it reaches the right temperature, add the calcium chloride solution to the milk while stirring. Continue stirring for a full minute using a lazy figure eight motion. Then, continuing to stir, add rennet and mix for a full minute, but no more. When you stop stirring, hold the spoon in the milk to calm it down. Cover the milk and leave it where it is for 24 hours.

During this time, two things happen: first, the rennet “hardens” the cheese. In the future, this is how you will harden the cheese in order to cut the curds, but in this case it will be a soft set, so you can just start the chevre. The second thing it does is give the culture time to mature into the taste of milk; this process is called “maturation”.

Drain the curd

When it’s time to return to the cheese after it has matured, set up a colander with a generous layer of sanitized cheesecloth and place it over a large pot or sink. We won’t store the serum, but you need to put it somewhere.

Transfer the pot to a colander and, using a slotted spoon, carefully spoon the curd and whey into the colander. When you’re done, let it sit for 30 minutes so it can drain.

When you return, with very clean hands, gather up the corners of the gauze and tie them. Hang this bag anywhere – most of us just use a clean broom handle, hanging it from shelves, books, or whatever you have, so that a bunch of cheese is suspended in the air above the pot. Leave it like that for six or seven hours or overnight, which is what I do.

Finish the cheese

Weigh the cheese, take this number and multiply it by 0.01. Whatever that number is, weigh it with non-iodized salt. Scrape all the cheese off the cheesecloth into a bowl and add the salt.

Cover bowl and refrigerate overnight to firm up. From here, you can eat it as is, add other elements to it to give the chevre flavor, or roll the chevre in something to give it flavor.

Chevre can be used to make savory dishes such as ravioli, goat cheese croutons, or to melt vegetables. The first piece of cheese should be on the toast without decorations, so prepare a loaf of crispy bread. Now you ‘re taking a risk too.