The typical steps used to make a lactic cheese:
- Warm the milk
- Add the cultures, hold until the cultures are definitely active
- If a small amount of rennet is used (usually only a few drops or so), add it
- Let the pot/vat sit for hours until whey begins to pool a little bit on top
- Scoop curd into draining cloth or forms
- Drain the curds, stirring occasionally or flipping in forms
- (optional) salt the curds
- Stir in or coat in herbs if using
- Refrigerate
A lactic cheese is generally not a lot of effort to make. The first step is an hour or so to get milk warmed and cultures added. Either later that day, or the next day, is to get it draining, where the flipping or stirring happens once every 1-4 hours or so until it reaches the consistency and tanginess you like. After that, salting and herbing and putting it in the fridge is all that is left.
- Warm the milk, usually to 88-92 F, but some recipes call for just room temperature.
- Add the culture and get it fermenting the milk
- Let it rehydrate on the surface of the milk for a few minutes if using DVI cultures.
- Stir cultures in thoroughly.
- Add the rennet if the recipe calls for a small amount of it. Some lactic cheeses benefit from a slightly more firm coagulation than lactic acid can produce on its own.
- Dilute rennet in cold unchlorinated water.
- Add to the milk and stir it in for a minute or so using primarily up-and-down motions. Still the milk and make sure it sits quietly without being disturbed.
- Let the curd form and acidify. This usually takes at least 12 hours, sometimes longer.
- Check for readiness, usually by seeing the curd begin to pull away from the sides of the pot or vat slightly (whey filling the gap), or whey beginning to pool on top and eventually cover the whole surface of the curd in a thin layer of whey.
- Scoop the curds out. Some lactic cheese are place into molds/forms to drain, others are ladled into cheese cloths (the tighter weave versions of cheese cloth) and hung above a bowl or pot to drain their whey.
- Drain the curds, occasionally stirring them inside the cheese cloth if you are using those, or by flipping the cheese in the forms if you are using those instead for draining. This can take anywhere from a few hours to a day or more, depending on the cheese recipe.
- Salt the curds. If you want, and the recipe calls for it, you can salt the curds or the formed cheese. If it's in a cheese cloth, you can stir the salt in. This will often encourage more whey to drain out, so you may need to let it drain an additional hour or two after salting. Recommended is to use no more salt than about 2% of the weight of the cheese, often times lactic cheeses use less than that if any at all.
- Add herbs if you wish. Formed cheeses you can just roll them on or press them in, and for cheese-cloth-hung cheeses you can stir them in.
- Refrigerate the cheese, it should last a week or two, sometimes longer if you added enough salt.
There are many, many variations on the steps above. Some are a different order, some are skipped, some steps will be added, all depending on the cheese style. The steps above are not rules. Don't get hung up on the particular steps, but they are quite common and you will recognize the above pattern in many cheese styles.