Exhaustive rules for manufacturing cheese on a small scale at home
occasionally go the rounds of the agricultural press. Some of them
contain ideas of real merit and some do not. All middle-aged people
who have in younger days lived in localities where dairying reached
even modest pretensions can recall the sweet-savored cheese room, an
adjunct of the kitchen, whose furnishing of primitive milk utensils
was then considered ample for the housewife’s use. Associated dairies
or factories soon came upon the stage, and their vast superiority of
method, coupled with the adoption of the cheddar system, marked an
era in cheese improvement, which said in effect, if not in words,
that “home dairy cheese must go.” The innovation of factories
undermined and swept out of existence this small fry of amateur
production, because home dairymen would not or could not adopt the
cheddar improvement and manipulate their milk with skilled labor.
Dairies associated together under factory regime facilitated such
an easy and quick disposal of one’s milk, and at such a greatly
enhanced profit, that the obvious convenience and economy of the new
order of things, more than any inimical characteristic it possessed,
pulled down the one and set up the other. It matters not, though,
to consumers in America or England, whether the cheese they eat is
made under the roof of a farm house on a small scale, or in a mammoth
factory on a large one, provided the quality is good. But there are
serious drawbacks about making up milk in diminutive quantity that
are hard to overcome. Let us discuss them and analyze their leading
features:
I think it is safe to assume that not one person out of fifty who
attempts to make home dairy cheese to-day but will manufacture it
just as his fathers did fifty years ago. In their minds the whole
process is covered by coagulation of the milk, quick cooking of the
curd, salting it and pressing it. There is no thought of having the
milk moderately mature, the curd thoroughly cooked and then properly
soured, and the salt judiciously applied. The amateur knows nothing
about the fine yet necessary points of manufacture, and so his cheese
lacks the fine but requisite points of quality to insure it trade
recognition. We all like good cheese to eat, but in this country,
thanks to the skimmer, it is getting so that the good article is very
scarce and promises to be scarcer if the skimmer’s relations with the
factory are not soon done away with.
A great many readers who live in non-cheese manufacturing districts
appreciate mellow, rich cheese when they sometimes at long intervals
find it on their groceryman’s counter, and vow that they would eat
the article more if the price was cheapened and the general quality
raised. You should, if you live a hundred miles or so from any
factory, and if you have a few cows and your neighbor has a few more,
club together and make up some cheese for your own use. You have a
vivid remembrance of how your mother used to manage it years ago.
Discard the wooden tub that she used, for now we have tin vessels
that are far preferable. Get two or three hundred pounds of milk
together, if possible, but do not rob it of a bit of cream—keep that
well worked into the fluid. Have a heavy bottomed tin box with round
corners, made at the tinner’s, one that is so shaped that it will
fit into a large caldron kettle and yet leave a couple of inches of
space between its outside surface and the iron sides of the kettle.
This space is for water, which should be used as the best conductor
to raise the temperature of the milk. Set the kettle in a brick or
stone arch, in which kindle a slow fire. With the tin vessel filled
with milk, and water about it in the way described, you have a cheese
vat in miniature. Have a thermometer handy. Stir the milk often and
do not let it get above 85° before setting. Draw the fire out before
it has fairly reached that temperature, as the after heat will raise
it a degree or two. Do not trust to your knowledge of the strength
of rennet. Buy some Rennetine and carefully follow directions as
to the amount necessary to coagulate 100 pounds of milk. Work the
rennet in thoroughly and then cover the little “vat” up with a piece
of sheeting. It is very important to have just enough rennet as too
much or too little will spoil the cheese. Have your tinner make you
two curd knives, one with perpendicular and the other with horizontal
blades. When the coagulated milk will break squarely over the finger,
and whey begins to start around the edges, cut it quite finely with
the knives, using first the perpendicular and then the horizontal
one. Raise the temperature slowly, not to 100° or 110°, but to a
point where the curd is thoroughly cooked but not to dryness. Stir
the curd and whey up at frequent intervals to keep it from packing.
Do not hustle it into the press now just because you have it cooked,
unless it is sour. Remember that the curd must mature, or, in other
words, generate acid. Therein lies the future good quality of the
cheese. Do not rely on your olfactory sense to gauge the sourness.
Press a little piece of the curd against a hot iron. When it pulls
out strings one-half of an inch long in spring, one inch long in
midsummer and one-half inch in fall, it is sour enough to be salted.
Have the whey all dipped off and the curd drained before it has
reached a maturity sufficient to salt. Do not salt in hot weather
higher than one-fourth of a pound to a hundred pounds of milk, and in
spring and fall less. As you have, at the most, only a little curd
to manipulate, do not let it get cold but put it in the hoop at a
temperature of at least 75°. Do not try to save over curd for another
batch the next day. Better have two twenty-pound cheese in two days
than one forty-pounder during the same time. You cannot graft new
curd onto old without lowering the quality of the whole. After you
have a curd in the hoop do not try to press it with stone weights
because there is so little of it. Have a small press frame and a
screw for that purpose. These small cheese will cure quickly. Keep
the ends well oiled, and lay them on a shelf in a warm room, where
they should be turned and rubbed every day.
The foregoing pointers are intended for persons who have some
previous knowledge of making dairy cheese, and, therefore, minute
details of explanation have not been given. The trouble with most
home dairy makers is that they do not realize the importance of
souring the curd, and so make weak, off-flavored, perishable stock.