# First Cheese of the Year



## Goat Town (Nov 20, 2010)

I don't consider myself much of a cheese maker, more likely a cheese dabbler. I make cheese when I have "extra" milk and need to do something with it short of pouring down the drain. 

As it happened last weekend I ran out of milk jugs and no way until the following Wednesday to get more. So I could not bottle milk for sale and had more milk than my babies could drink, So I made some chevre. But not just any chevre. I used buttermilk as a starter culture instead of flora danica. Wow! what a difference. The resulting cheese was so creamy and smooth.


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## texgran (Mar 29, 2009)

Did you use goat buttermilk or store bought cultured? What exactly was your recipe/process? It was creamy, how was the flavor? I wonder: would kefir work in place of the buttermilk?


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## Goat Town (Nov 20, 2010)

I used store bought butter milk. Here's what I did. I pulled the buttermilk and rennet out of the fridge a couple hours before I set the cheese so it would be room temp. I heated a gallon of milk to 86 degrees. To the warm milk I added 1/3 cup buttermilk and stirred. I added 6 drops of rennet to five tablespoons and added 1 tablespoon of that to the milk. I let it sit at room temperature for 8 hours. The curd formed so I cut it into cubes. I lined and old milk srainer with cheesecloth (12 quart) and ladled the curds into it. I set the strainer into a 2 gallon bucket to catch the whey. I then tightened the cheesecloth and squeezed as hard as I could, repeating that several times over an hour. I put the strainer and two gallon bucket into the fridge and left it there overnight and well into the next afternoon. The curd settled into the bottom of the strainer which molds it nicely. when I pulled it out I put the cheesecloth onto a cutting board, opened it and spread everything out. It tasted rather bland so I lightly salted everthing and packaged it in 6 ounce containers.


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## Goat Town (Nov 20, 2010)

I fiddled with the above recipe again this week because I have an abundance of milk right now. First I doubled it, setting two gallons of milk. I used twice as much buttermilk and twice as much rennet. I also hung the cheese bag for five hours before taking it to the fridge for overnight. The chevre was much drier, had a nice flavor, and needed no salt. It was more crumbly and perfect for the lasgna I was making. I think because it's drier, it will freeze better. Tasters last night appreciated the flavor and asked me how soon I could make some more and could I season it differently. So with the next batch I'm going to try sun dried tomatoes and basil.


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