Ok, how in the heck did the term cheezy (sometimes spelled cheesy) come to mean showy and/or cheap? Here’s a good answer: the Urdu word “chiz,” meaning a “thing,” became used by British colonialists to mean a “big thing.” One can easily imagine the proper Englishman gentleman’s disdain for something obvious and showy.
I knew it could not have anything to do with cheese, which is, after all, ambrosia.
What is milk? Well I am not a scientist but I played one in a play in high school, so I will try to describe it at the scientist-playing-ham-actor level. Milk is composed of these things:
The relative amounts of each varies based on the type of animal and what they are eating and drinking. You can make cheese from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, oxen, camels, yaks and even people. Essentially any mammal can make milk, and from that we can make cheese.
Lactose is a carbohydrate and is really yummy to lots of types of bacteria. If milk did not have lactose, it would take a lot longer to spoil. If there were a way to convert or expel the lactose, then that process would make the proteins and fats last longer so you could store that part of the milk longer. Voila yogurt and cheese!
When we make cheese, we add beneficial bacteria to the milk and they chow down on the lactose, converting it to a mild acid called lactase. If you add an enzyme called rennet at this point, it will cause the insoluble proteins to link together to form longer chains which can trap and hold some of the fat while expelling some of the soluble proteins, water and lactase. The fat and insoluble proteins form what we call curds. The water, soluble proteins and lactase that are expelled are called whey.
Here are some pictures of cheeses I have made. The first picture is several months old and includes a Double Gloucester (orange colored) and an Asiago (pale colored):
I made these about eight or nine months ago – before June last year anyway. Both of these had been waxed. Generally I like to use very little Annatto, which is a natural food color. There’s nothing wrong with Annatto. I am just resistant to adding color unless there is a really good reason. Homogenized milk is often shockingly white and produces cheese that is surprisingly white (see my first firm cheese below). After that cheese, I started adding a few drops to make most of my cheeses look more creamy than white as a sheet.
Double Gloucester is traditionally rather orange, so I used more Annatto than usual. I think I used about 25 drops with three gallons of whole milk and some cream.
These are recent cheeses I have made. The one on the left is a Cheddar and the more rounded one on the right is a Gruyere:
The one on the left (the Cheddar) has already been waxed before the picture was taken. The Gruyere is still drying prior to waxing in this picture. I do not have the controlled environment to do long-term aging of cheeses like Gruyere yet, so after allowing the cheese to develop a relatively dry rind I wax them. The Gruyere was a nice cylindrical shape like the cheddar after I took it from the cheese press. During drying the flat sides contracted more than the middle section giving the cheese a more rounded shape.
The Gruyere was made from raw milk from Lavon Farms (AKA Lucky Layla Farms). The Cheddar was made from store-bought pasteurized milk (Oak Farms whole milk). I used about 6 drops of Annatto on the cheddar. I did not color the Gruyere because the rich, raw milk had such a lovely creamy color already.
This is Scampi
She was a stray kitten who started living in our yard. We coaxed her into the house when the weather got cold two winters ago. The CheeseWife™ named her Scampi because she usually scampered away whenever she saw us. She is still a little skittish about people but is really good friends with our cats, particularly Sam. When she lets us pet her, she really purrs, stretches and otherwise lets us know that she likes it. Sometimes when it is really cold out she curls up on the bed behind my knees for warmth. Shortly after she moved in with us, we took her to the vet for shots and getting “fixed.” Actually she was prepared to function all too properly and we changed that, so I think of it as having her “broke!”
It is as true in cheesemaking as it is in cooking: the quality of the ingredients can make or break the dish (or cheese in this case). You can make good cheese from ordinary homogenized and pasteurized store milk as long as it is reasonably fresh. Unless you have your own cows or have a really convenient farm you will probably need to work with regular store-bought milk. Until very recently that is what I have been using because it is pretty inexpensive and I hated to waste great raw milk on my early learning mistakes. Follow these points in choosing your milk for cheese:
1. Use milk that is really fresh. A lot of milk is shipped a long way to the store. I’m in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and see milk from Ohio, Colorado and California on the shelves in the stores. I try to buy milk from no farther away than Oklahoma. I also try to get milk that was delivered to the store that same day.
2. Avoid milk that is ultra-pasteurized for cheesemaking. Ultra-pasteurization uses unusually high temperature and kills just about any bacteria in the milk. But it also damages proteins and enzymes that are beneficial to the cheesemaking process. You may be able to make ricotta from this milk but not much else. Unfortunately almost all “organic” milk that you find is ultra-pasteurized. This gives the milk really long shelf-life but makes it poor for making cheese. You may be able to use ultra-pasteurized milk with regular pasteurized milk if at least 50% of the milk used is not ultra-pasteurized.
3. Generally stick to fresh liquid milk. Milk that has been frozen or dried may be used to make cheese but you may want to use it with 50% or more fresh milk. Processes like freezing or drying can damage the proteins in the milk in a similar fashion to ultra-pasteurization.
4. If you can find a farm selling fresh raw (i.e. unpasteurized) milk you should look into doing so. Most US states have laws and agriculture departments that can license a dairy farm to sell raw milk to the public only at the farm.
I have bought raw milk at two farms here in Texas and found the milk to be spectacular. Due to lactose sensitivity I can’t drink it but the CheeseWife™ has tasted both and declared them the best milk she ever had. I made quark with both and both were delicious. I made Gruyere cheese with one and Edam with the other and will report on them when they have aged 60 days each.