Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Keep Calm And Make Cheese
    Keep Calm And Make Cheese
    Keep Calm And Make Cheese
    Ebook206 pages1 hour

    Keep Calm And Make Cheese

    By Gavin Webber

    5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Have you ever wanted to make real cheese at home, but didn't know where or how to start? Well look no further, as this book makes it easy for the beginner to jump right in and make cheese.

    Keep Calm, and Make Cheese steps you through the process of home cheese making with 27 tried and tested recipes for the budding home cheese maker to follow and create.

    With over 60 pictures, and links to 16 of the author's simple to follow cheese making video tutorials, the whole process becomes much easier to achieve success than you would by reading a normal cheese making book.

    After reading this book you too will be able to "Keep Calm and Make Cheese", in your very own home.

    This second edition contains three new recipes, four new video tutorials, and a resource section.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGavin Webber
    Release dateApr 20, 2013
    ISBN9781301550364
    Keep Calm And Make Cheese
    Author

    Gavin Webber

    By day, Gavin Webber is a mild-mannered IT professional working in the heart of Melbourne and recently earned a Diploma of Carbon Management.However, at night and on weekends he becomes a committed and feverish blogger and writer, informing the world and giving practical tips on cheese making, fruit and vegetable growing, chickens, DIY backyard building and many other sustainability topics.Married to Kim, with four children scattered around the globe, he currently lives in Victoria, Australia, and continues to write about his journey at his blog, The Greening of Gavin. The blog has over 1400 posts and has received over 1.7 million page views.Gavin's sustainable living work was recently acknowledge when he received the 2013 Green Lifestyle Award for "Local Green Hero". He was also listed as Highly Commended in the On-line Eco Information site category.

    Read more from Gavin Webber

    Related to Keep Calm And Make Cheese

    Related ebooks

    Cooking, Food & Wine For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      SOURDOUGH Simplified

      Nov 8, 2019

      SOURDOUGH Simplified
      10 min read

    • Article

      THE RISE & RISE OF BAKING

      May 27, 2021

      THE RISE & RISE OF BAKING
      4 min read

    • Article

      HISTORICAL Honey Mead

      Aug 10, 2018

      HISTORICAL Honey Mead
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Cultured Kitchen

      May 1, 2019

      The Cultured Kitchen
      6 min read

    • Article

      Einkorn Grain

      Aug 30, 2019

      Einkorn Grain
      8 min read

    • Article

      SULPHUR DIOXIDE IN WINE: The Great Debate

      Jan 6, 2021

      There was a time, not so long ago, when making quality wines without adding sulphur dioxide (SO ² ) was widely considered close to impossible, largely the preserve of mavericks. Inspired by the philosophies of natural wine guru Jules Chauvet, a small

      6 min read

    • Article

      Backyard Bread Oven

      Nov 9, 2018

      Backyard Bread Oven
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Magic of Mozzarella

      Mar 13, 2020

      The Magic of Mozzarella
      3 min read

    • Article

      Bush Food Blossoms

      May 1, 2019

      Bush Food Blossoms
      5 min read

    • Article

      Home-Raised PIG FEED

      Feb 21, 2020

      Home-Raised PIG FEED
      7 min read

    • Article

      Simple SOURDOUGH

      Dec 13, 2019

      Simple SOURDOUGH
      8 min read

    • Article

      Sourdough

      Apr 23, 2020

      Sourdough
      9 min read

    • Article

      Fresh Pastures

      Dec 19, 2021

      How Jennifer Rodrigue of Belle Chèvre Creamery went from a high-flying career in Silicon Valley to milking her own goats to make cheese on a small Northland farm. I was brought up in the Silicon Valley and was very good at maths and sciences, so I go

      2 min read

    • Article

      You Too Can Bake Bread

      Nov 9, 2018

      You Too Can Bake Bread
      12 min read

    • Article

      Churn It Up

      Aug 1, 2023

      Churn It Up
      2 min read

    • Article

      My Darling Lemon Thyme

      Nov 1, 2017

      My Darling Lemon Thyme
      9 min read

    • Article

      What You Can Learn From Jesse Dunford Wood

      Jun 25, 2020

      1 Muffin tins are great for baking with kids. They make what has the potential to be a messy mound into a neat little round. Like everyone else recently, we’ve been baking banana bread, but individually as mini ones, and we make pastry-less quiches,

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Good Life

      Aug 9, 2019

      I have started brewing beer again. I know that’s not unusual and many of us do it. What has struck me from my past experience is how much better the modern brews are. In the past when I brewed you had very little choice — it was Coopers, or Coopers.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Vegan Milk Is The Future

      Feb 26, 2021

      Vegan Milk Is The Future
      2 min read

    • Article

      Breaking Bread

      Sep 9, 2022

      Breaking Bread
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cumberland Sausage

      Jun 7, 2023

      Cumberland Sausage
      4 min read

    • Article

      Book More Than a Table

      Aug 1, 2019

      Book More Than a Table
      1 min read

    • Article

      Cheesemaking

      Oct 1, 2020

      Cheesemaking
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Keep Calm And Make Cheese

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Keep Calm And Make Cheese - Gavin Webber

      Chapter One: Why I Make Cheese

      I have a confession to make.

      My name is Gavin Webber, and I love making cheese.

      All right, maybe not so nerdy, but you could class me as an amateur cheese maker, who is mad about making his own cheese at home. In fact, I like cheese making so much that I make at least 1kg (2.2lbs) of cheese of various forms, once a fortnight.

      Sounds a bit excessive, doesn’t it? I bet you want to know how I started on this cheese-making journey and how I went from cheese consumer to cheese producer. All right then, here is my story.

      I grew up on a dairy farm where my family managed about 120 milking cows, a couple of bulls, and the odd sheep or two. We also kept chickens and ducks to provide us with fresh eggs. There were even a couple of pigs for meat.

      Milk was always in abundance, as you would expect on a dairy farm, and as a child my brothers, sister, and I would drink fresh raw milk by the bucket full.

      Dad would also extract cream from some of the milk so that my Mother could make butter, and drink the skimmed milk.

      With all this abundant milk, the one thing you would naturally think that we would make would be cheese. Alas, this was not the case.

      My parents did not make cheese of any form, not even yoghurt, and we grew up thinking that processed cheese, which came wrapped in tin foil, and packaged in a blue rectangular cardboard box was what cheese was supposed to taste like. You did not even need to refrigerate it. My Dad used to call it ‘soap suds’, but being uninformed kids, we did not know if cheese got any better than that rectangle block.

      This was back in the 1960’s and ‘70’s and the Australian palate was a lot different from the multicultural flavours we have in our diet today. The country was still growing in population through immigration from mainly Mediterranean backgrounds. This influx of different cultures brought with it a change in diet from the bland meat and two veg, to an abundance of gastronomic delights that Australia is now renowned for worldwide.

      One such multicultural experience introduced me to a milk product other than butter and ‘soap suds’. I was visiting a friend, whose parents were of Greek origin and they invited me to stay for lunch.

      At the meal they served marinated Kalamanta olives, fresh flat bread, preserved salami, and best of all, homemade Greek Yoghurt and freshly made Feta.

      The memory is still vividly etched into my neural pathways, and I can still taste the sharpness of the Yoghurt and the saltiness of the Feta. It was a taste experience that I shall never forget.

      To this day, I still do not know why my parents chose to forgo cheese making with all that lovely raw milk at hand. Maybe it was because they didn’t know how or because the knowledge was not passed down by the previous generation. Possibly the ingredients were difficult to come by. Whatever the reason, I was privileged to live such a wonderful childhood on the dairy farm.

      Fast forward to February 2009 which was a momentous month. It was the month that I made my very first cheese. But why was it momentous?

      Well, from the day that I first tasted those Greek dairy products, I had always wondered how they made cheese at home. Most cheeses I knew about were made under hygienic conditions in a factory.

      Now was my chance. Our local community centre was hosting a cheese making course, and to cut a long story short, I thoroughly enjoyed the five hour course. I made some Feta and then purchased a cheese making kit afterwards so that I could make my very own cheese at home.

      Finally, my wish came true and I created a delicious feta not unlike the one I remembered all those years ago.

      Since that very first cheese, I have gone on to make many more different types including the following;

      Feta, Wensleydale, Farmhouse Cheddar, Emmentaler, Stilton, Camembert, Parmesan, Ricotta, Romano, Pepper Jack, Monterey Jack, Ossau-Iraty with green peppercorns, Caerphilly and Mozzarella, to name a few, all of which will be covered in this book as well as many other cheese recipes.

      I am so passionate about making cheese at home that I try to seek out the freshest milk so that I can make the best cheese possible.

      I also recently began to teach regular cheese making courses at the very same community house that I first learnt the process. I even write a cheese making blog titled, Little Green Cheese where I share knowledge with others all around the world.

      I also enjoy making video tutorials to share via my cheese blog. This book also contains links to the twelve full cheese making video tutorials that I have featured on YouTube.

      All video links are marked with a camera icon like the one below.

      So you can see that from very humble beginnings, I was bitten by the turophile bug and have not looked back since. It has become an amazing hobby that in my case has turned into a part time vocation. It allows me to express my creative side and make many varieties of cheese in the process.

      After all this talk, how does it taste? Well, let me tell you that once you have made your own cheese, you will never buy store bought stuff again. Okay, maybe only when you run out of your own. The only problem you will have is keeping up with demand!

      In this no-nonsense book I will show you the basic methods of home cheese making, the ingredients, techniques and successfully tested recipes for many interesting cheeses. You will also be able to reuse many of the kitchen utensils and cookware that you probably have at hand around your home. I have taken the liberty to list all measurements and temperatures in the metric system and the US system for true international utilisation.

      Starting with simple ingredients making soft cheeses, we will work our way up to the more labour intensive semi-hard and hard cheese varieties, then mould ripened cheeses, which require a little more experience to master. I have personally made at least two wheels of cheese from each of these recipes to ensure that the beginner will be successful.

      It is so addictive. You may want to remember this simple little rule when it is midnight, and you are half way through the process of making your first Wensleydale, which will take a full nine hours to complete.

      The rule of thumb is, "Keep Calm, and Make Cheese!"

      Once bitten by the cheese making bug, you will never want to stop making cheese again. I like to think of it as milk’s own leap towards immortality. You will be making your very own homemade cheese whenever you have a spare moment!

      Just think though; you will be the talk of your circle of friends for a very long time once they taste the finished product.

      So break out the water crackers and stay put for a cheesy quest. This adventure will be starring you, the prospective new cheese maker in your community. I am very excited for you!

      Note: This second edition contains three new recipes, four new video tutorials, and a resource section.

      Chapter Two: About Cheese

      A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull, it may be naive, it may be over sophisticated. Yet it remains, cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality. – Clifton Fadiman

      The Basics of Cheese making

      Milk is not the simple white liquid that some people think comes from a carton or bottle. It is a living, breathing, entity that sometimes seems endowed with almost magical properties.

      Before you begin to make cheese, it is important to understand some basic principles involved in the process, and how the properties of milk make it all possible. Milk can clot, whereby it can increase in acidity and turn sour.

      Milk’s ability to clot is due to the protein called casein. Casein is the white substance that separates when

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1