Cheese Ingredients
Some Interesting Facts About Cheese Ingredients
The finest clumps of strained, aged milk curd can only come from the very best cheese ingredients, and oddly enough, most cheeses start with the very same ones. This ancient process of milk rendering has been perfected since as early as the 8th century, when shepherds and farmers had to find ways of preserving their spoils without a trace of modern technology to build on. These early experimentations formed the mold for cheese ingredients and methods that would be passed on and improved for centuries to come. The reason that cheese seems so simple is because there are only an average of three ingredients per recipe. But what makes them so different is the technique, the skill, the process that they undergo as their aging begins. Cheese is a scientific and artistic wonder, and the fact that it was a success before we even knew that live cultures and bacteria existed makes it all the more wondrous an accomplishment.
Cheese ingredients most regularly include the lactation of an animal, such as cattle, sheep, yak, horse, goat, ox, water buffalo, llama, really whatever mammal is either available or whose milk will give the desired consistency and quality to the end product. Each of these milks carries its own specific make up and density, with cattle milk generally being considered as the mildest, goat’s milk being the strongest, sheep’s milk considerably sweet, and so on. The milk choice being the first of the three main cheese ingredients, it needs to be handled correctly during the first stage of the delicate, hit or miss process.
The next ingredient in cheese is the addition of live, active cultures, usually introduced by way of yogurt or buttermilk. These bacteria interact with the standing, room temperature milk to create a living substance, and any contamination at this point of the good bacteria growing in the milk spells ruin for the cheese. Everything has been carefully sterilized and controlled to this point, and the good bacteria in the yogurt has to win out over any possibly bad.
The final ingredient for basic cheese is an animal based protein enzyme known as rennet. This key ingredient is essential in the separation of the whey from the curd. This process can take up to two hours, during which the standing milk can not be disturbed or tampered with at all. When a careful fingertip has been inserted into the milk and causes a break in the congealed white surface, the curd is ready to be broken and rendered from the whey. This is the big moment, as the cheese maker will find out whether the curd has been contaminated or is sterile and ready for molding. Once cut into ½ inch cubes, the curd should fall to the bottom of the pan, submerged in the whey. If the curd floats, it is no longer usable for cheese.