Cheese is one of the great fermented foods of the world, yet many of us do not think of it as being probiotic. This is because most store-bought cheese is no longer a live food; its culturing process has been halted to help preserve it. Also, some people think all cheese is fermented by molds (like blue cheese), even though probiotic bacterial cultures are used frequently. Even so, adding the starter culture (filled with good bacteria) is one of the first steps in a long process. Starter cultures are mainly used for flavoring and their main work is done in a matter of hours.
Can this beneficial bacteria make it all the way through the cheese-making process and end up in the final product you consume? The answer is yes, particularly with certain fresh and aged cheeses. Raw, aged gouda, cheddar, and Parmegiano-Reggiano cheeses have been found to contain beneficial lactobacteria. Soft cheeses, such as cottage cheese, feta, and chevre (goat cheese) are even easier to culture and make at home. You will need a few basic supplies and ingredients, such as cheese starter cultures, rennet, calcium chloride, cheese moulds (not molds), and (if you wish) some cheese wax for aged cheeses, all of which are available at many health food stores and online from cheese-making supply stores.
Surprisingly, cheese may be one of the best probiotic foods in the world. Studies have demonstrated that because of cheese’s protein and fat complex, and the way our bodies digest this, cheese is extremely effective at delivering probiotic cultures deep into our digestive systems. With some other foods, the cultures are broken down in the stomach, so these cultures never have a chance to colonize in our guts. Apparently, cheese allows them to make it further down. Bottom line: eating probiotic cheese may be one of the best ways to rebuild and maintain your body’s probiotic health.
The recipes below cover cottage, feta, chevre (soft goat cheese), and gouda cheeses. They are probably the most difficult recipes in this book. I chose them both because of their probiotic benefits and because these are some of the simpler cheeses to make. Best of luck!
Cottage Cheese
Makes about 4 cups
Most cottage cheese recipes involve cooking the curds above 110°F, which does not help their probiotic content. This recipe uses a two-stage culturing process to create a live, active-cultured cottage cheese. First, mesophilic starter culture or buttermilk is used to separate the curd from the whey and create the proper flavor. After the curds are cut, drained, cooked, and drained again, yogurt whey or kefir adds a strong probiotic culture. Yes, you can use buttermilk as a source of culture for this cheese if you want, though the curd size will be smaller.
• 1 gallon milk (cow or goat milk)
• 1 package mesophilic direct-set cheese starter culture or ½ cup cultured buttermilk
• ½ rennet tablet (or ½ teaspoon liquid rennet), dissolved in ¼ cup water
• 2 tablespoons yogurt whey or kefir
• Optional: ½ teaspoon to 1 teaspoon sea salt
In a large pot, using a cheese thermometer, heat milk to 75°F. Add a culture packet or buttermilk, stir it in, and cover. The culture will take about 24 hours to do its job. During this time, its ideal temperature is 70–75°F, so try to insulate the pan if your air temperature is lower than this. Consider putting some warm water bottles around the pan and covering it with a towel or two, for example.
After 24 hours, the curd should be thick. Using a long knife, cut it horizontally and vertically (like a grid) to make ½-inch cubes. Then, let the curds sit for 15 minutes as you get the hot water bath ready.
Next, you need to heat the curds to 110–120°F. The easiest way to do this is to place the pot of curds in a water bath. Fill up a large sink, basin, or bathtub with really hot water, slightly above the level of the curds in the pot. Conveniently, if we turn our tap to hot water, it comes out at 120°F. If yours is cooler, then you may need to boil a pot or two and dump it in also.
You need to hold the water temperature in this hot range for 25 minutes, which may require adding additional hot water, possibly after draining out a little cooler stuff. Stir the curds gently, once every 5 minutes. When the curds look like they have both shrunken and firmed up, you can stop the water bath and strain out the curds from the whey. The easiest methods are to use a strainer, a colander lined with cheesecloth, or a straining bag.
As the curds drain, wash them with cold water over the sink to bring down their temperature to no more than 50°F. If you prefer, you can move the colander/strainer/bag to a bath of ice water to chill them. Then strain and drain curd again. Once drained, which can take 30–60 minutes, you are finished with the difficult part. Before placing cheese in the refrigerator, add sea salt and whey/kefir. Stir this in, cover the cottage cheese, and move it to the refrigerator. You can eat it any time for the next two weeks or so.
Feta Cheese
Makes 1 pound
This recipe uses yogurt as a cheese culture. I have adapted it from the Cultures for Health website, which is located at www.culturesforhealth.com and is an excellent source of fermentation supplies. To make the cheese set properly, you also will need calcium chloride and rennet (regular, vegetable, or microbial). The calcium chloride is optional, but highly recommended. Most milk is lacking in calcium, especially if it has been processed, and adding additional calcium ensures the cheese will set. You can get both rennet and calcium chloride at health food stores or online at a chef’s or cheese-making supply store. Use a large stainless steel or nonmetal pot, since cheese ingredients may react with other metals. Nonmetal containers are best for the cultures also, but since few people have large nonmetal pots, stainless steel will do.
Primary ingredients:
• 1 gallon goat milk (you can use cow milk also)
• 1 tablespoon yogurt
• ½ rennet tablet (or ½ teaspoon liquid rennet), dissolved in ¼ cup water
• ⅛ teaspoon calcium chloride, dissolved in ¼ cup water
Ingredients for brine:
• ¼ cup sea salt, diluted in
• 2 quarts water
Dilute calcium chloride with ¼ cup water. In a large pot, using a cheese thermometer, heat milk to 86°F. As milk warms, add calcium-water solution to the milk and stir well. Once milk is partway to warm, take ½ cup of milk out, and mix yogurt into the ½ cup milk, crushing any lumps. At 86°F, take the pot off the heat, add the yogurt-milk culture, and stir it into the pot of milk. Cover loosely with a towel or cheesecloth. Let the cultured milk sit for 1 hour, at which time it should be room temperature.
With another ¼ cup of water, dilute the rennet. Add this to the cultured milk at room temperature and stir it very lightly with an up-down (not back-and-forth) motion of the spoon.
Cover the pot with a lid and let the cultured milk sit overnight (for 8–10 hours). When you check it again the next morning, there should be clear gelling and curd separation in the milk.
With a long knife, cut the curd into ½-inch cubes. Gently stir the curds for 20 minutes to complete their separation from the whey.
Pour out the contents of the pot over a colander or strainer lined with cheesecloth, separating the curds from the whey. Cover and let them continue to drain for 4 hours or until all liquid is gone (no more drips).
Place curds into a large jar or bowl and cover them with the salt brine solution. Let the curds brine for 4–5 days. At that point, you can begin eating the cheese. You can store the feta cheese cubes in this brine for up to one month.
Chevre (Soft Goat Cheese)
Makes 1 pound
• 1 gallon goat milk (or use cow’s milk for a cream cheese-style flavor)
• 1 package chevre culture
• Optional: 1 teaspoon yogurt whey or kefir
In a large pot, heat milk to 160°F, then cool to 86°F. Remove pot from heat and add chevre culture. Cover the pot and let it sit for 12 hours or until the cultured milk has the thickness of yogurt.
Optional: To introduce yogurt cultures, add the yogurt whey to the chevre curds and whey. Mix gently.
Strain and drain chevre over a strainer lined with tight cheesecloth or pour this into a straining bag. It will take 6–12 hours to drain the whey from the curds.
At this point, you can enjoy the fresh chevre as is, mix in some fresh or dried herbs, or ladle curds into chevre cheese moulds. Moulds are optional; you can purchase them online from cheese-making supply stores.
Cover moulds with plastic wrap or aluminum foil and put them in the refrigerator for 24–48 hours. You will need to put something under the moulds to catch any drippings. If you have a kitchen rack or food-safe screen, you can place the draining moulds on top of this, with a bowl or tray underneath. Alternatively, you can place them on a “block” above a tray or bowl. The “block” can be anything in the kitchen that fits and has a bit of flat surface, such as a cookie cutter, an overturned shot glass, or an overturned measuring cup. You just need something that will serve as a spacer, allowing any remaining liquid to drip down and keep it away from the curds in the mould.
For soft cheese like chevre, you do not need to place a weight on top of the mould—it will dry out and compact quite well by itself within a day or two.
Remove chevre from the mould by tapping it out. This is a great time to roll it in any flavoring if you choose to do so, such as dried or fresh herbs, garlic or onion powder, or edible ash (available online from cheese-making supply stores). Store your roll of chevre in plastic wrap or in a container. Delicious!
Gouda Cheese
Makes 1 pound
This recipe makes a baby gouda, which does not require aging. However, the flavor will improve if you age this cheese for 3–6 months.
• 1 gallon whole milk
• 1 package (⅛ teaspoon) Mesophilic M cheese culture
• ½ rennet tablet (or ½ teaspoon liquid rennet), dissolved in ¼ cup water
• ¼ teaspoon calcium chloride, dissolved in ¼ cup water
• Optional: 1 teaspoon yogurt whey or kefir
Heat milk to 90°F in a large stainless steel or nonmetal pot. Remove from heat, add Mesophilic M starter culture, and gently stir it in. Also add calcium-water solution. Then add rennet solution and mix this in gently for 1 minute with an up-down motion.
Let it sit for 1 hour or until curd has set. You can check for this by running a knife through the curd at an angle and picking up a little bit of the curd on the knife. If the curd breaks cleanly not sticking to the knife, and if the whey runs into the crack, then you have full separation. If you wait much longer, the curd will be too tough.
The next step is cutting the curd. The main reason to cut curd is to release the whey, which creates curds that will make a harder cheese. Your task is to cut the curd into 1–2-inch pieces, not much bigger or smaller. With the knife, cut vertical and horizontal columns so that each piece of curd is 1–2 inches on each side. Of course, getting the knife underneath them to make a clean bottom cut is a challenge, but luckily it is acceptable to cut at a 45-degree angle if needed. These pieces need not be cubic in shape.
Once you’ve cut off the top level of curds, use a spoon to pull up the bigger pieces and use the knife to cut them into 1–2-inch pieces. You may be able to use the spoon for this, but if it’s not sharp enough, then use the knife. Stir the curds around to make sure you haven’t left any; stirring for 3–5 minutes also helps ensure the curd is completely separated from the whey.
Let it settle for about 5 minutes. While waiting, bring a pot of water to 175°F. You will use this to raise the temperature of the curds. Add one cup of the hot water to the curds and gently stir curds for 10 minutes. Then let them settle for 10 more minutes, while you lower the temperature of the hot water pot to 150–170°F.
Using a strainer, colander, or some means of holding back the curds, pour off 4 cups of whey from the curd pot. Add four cups of hot water to the curd pot, replacing the whey. Stir it and check the temperature, which should be 100°F. You will need to keep it at 100°F for the next 20 minutes as you stir the curds. One way to do this is to fill sink a few inches high with 100–110°F water and place the pot in it.
After stirring for 20 minutes at 100°F, it is time to strain the curds from the whey. Use a strainer or colander lined with cheesecloth or a straining bag. First, make sure the curds are ready for straining by taking out a handful of them with a spoon, cooling them in cold water, and then squeezing them in your hand. If they stick together, you can strain the whole bunch. If not, wait 5 minutes before taking out the curds from the whey. Strain them, saving the whey or pouring it out. Then let the curds sit for 5 minutes before proceeding.
Optional: With the temperature coming down again, this is where you can add some more probiotic cultures if you choose. To do so, just drip the yogurt whey or kefir over the curds, mixing gently to distribute it.
While curds are still warm, put them into the cheese moulds and cover with the followers. Place 1-pound weights (or four rolls of pennies) on top of each mould for 15 minutes. Take cheese out and turn it over, covering again with followers, and this time pressing with 2–3 pounds for another 15 minutes.
Keep repeating this step with 2–3-pound pressure until the rind of the cheese is smooth without gaps. Then leave 2–3-pound weights on cheese overnight (for 8–10 hours).
Brine the cheese in a solution of 1½ cups salt diluted in ½ gallon of water. After pressing, place cheese in the brine and let this sit at room temperature for 2 hours. Air-dry the cheese on a rack or mat until it is dry to the touch. This can take up to one day.
To wax the cheese, melt some cheese wax (following the directions that come with the wax) and paint it on with a waxing brush, laying a thick coat all around the cheese. Then place it in the refrigerator and let the cheese age for 3–6 months.
