Jackie and I traveled back to the Ploughshare Institute for Sustainable Culture to further expand the skills we are learning from them with a class on cheesemaking. On Friday, we took the soft cheese class, and on Saturday, we learned about hard cheese.
Here are the soft cheeses we learned to make:
- Butter
- Buttermilk
- Yogurt
- Sour cream
- Cream cheese
- Mozzarella
- Labneh (a yogurt cream cheese)
- Cottage cheese
- Traditional Feta cheese
- Ricotta
- Cracker spread
Here are the hard cheese we learned to make:
- Monterrey Jack
- Pepper Jack
- Chipotle cheddar
- Colby
- Colby Jack
- Parmesan
- Caraway Gouda
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- Jackie making butter
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- Homemade butter
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- Herb gathering
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- Cheese ball making
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- Cheese roll seasoning
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- Stirring mozzarella
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- Just the right temperature
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- Curds
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- Mozzarella
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- Packaging mozzarella
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- Mozzarella
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- Making cheddar cheese
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- Cutting the curds
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- Breaking up the curds
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- Salting the cheddar curds
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- Pressing the cheddar curds
Jackie and I had a blast! We ate more cheese than we have in some time (if ever!). We especially enjoyed the soft cheese workshop because you can get to the end of process in several hours rather than months later for the hard cheeses.
Of course, we had to purchase some cheesemaking equipment to take home with us. I know that it is cheaper to purchase cheese from the supermarket, but these days, if we cannot make it more complicated than that and make it ourselves, we seem not to be interested. Stay tuned!
Jeff Savell 