The typical steps used to make a rennet cheese:
- Warm the milk
- Add the cultures, hold until the cultures are definitely active
- Add the rennet and form a curd
- Cut the curds
- Stir the curds
- (optional) heat the curds
- (optional) replace some whey with water for washed-curd recipes
- Stir curds some more until they are “ready"
- Pour whey off
- Form the cheese
- Drain and press the cheese
- Cool and salt the cheese
- Dry the cheese and prepare the surface for aging
- Age the cheese in cave conditions, flipping regularly
A rennet cheese typically takes the better part of a day to get through steps 1-11, and steps 12 and 13 are pretty hands-off. Step 14 is very hands-off, except for checking on the cheese regularly to see how it's coming along. One long day, a little more work that week, and then a slow aging process.
- Warm the milk, usually to 88-92 F
- 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.
- Wait for the culture to wake up and start acidifying the milk if using DVI cultures (somewhere between a half hour to 2 hours). The wait can be skipped if using mother cultures, or optionally wait for a 0.1 pH drop or so if measuring pH.
- Add the rennet and coagulate the milk to form a curd.
- 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.
- To check for curd formation using the flocculation multiplier method:
- Add your cap or bowl if you use that for detecting flocculation, and start your timer.
- Check periodically (carefully without disturbing the milk if possible) for flocculation periodically, usually this happens sometime between 10 and 20 minutes from when your timer started.
- Once flocculation occurs and the cap stops spinning or a knife blade picks up floccules, note the time on the timer, and multiply the time passed since you started it by the flocculation multiplier. Wait for the timer to reach that final time (e.g. if 12 minutes have passed on the timer, and you have a 2.5x multiplier, then you would wait for minute 30 on the timer to cut the curd).
- To check for curd formation using the clean break method:
- Wait for approximately the amount of time expected for the recipe
- Slice into the curd with the blade vertical, but angled about 45 degrees down, and then slide the knife in under your cute horizontally and slowly lift the curd. If it lifts and continues to split along the first cut cleanly and with minimal milkiness in the whey that leaks into the cut, you have achieved a clean break and the curd is ready to cut.
- Cut the curd into as evenly-sized cubes as possible, with the size dictated by the recipe.
- It can be helpful to cut vertically with a curd knife or a long brisket knife first. If your final cut is supposed to be half-inch sized cubes, you may want to cut a 1-2 inch sized lattice first, let it sit for a minute while the cut surfaces “heal”, and then cut further to get to half-inch sized lattice in the curd. Let the cut curds rest for a 1-5 minutes to heal the cut surfaces; this helps retain more butterfat inside the curds.
- Cut the curds horizontally. This is tricky; you may need to cut the curds at a 45 degree angle with your curd knife and make the best of it, or use a curd cutter if you can find one. There will inevitably be curds that don't get cut small enough on the first pass; during the stirring which comes next, you can continue cutting curds that need to become smaller, so don't worry if it's not perfect.
- Begin stirring the cut curds very slowly and gently at first. Using a slotted or other flat-ish ladle with holes in it (see the tools page for more information), carefully work the ladle to the bottom of the vat or pot, work it underneath some curds, and lift slowly and gently (sometimes with small side-to-side rocking motions) to elevate the curds from the bottom to the top. Continue to do this very gently and slowly for a few minutes at least, according to the recipe.
- While you are stirring, bring the curds and whey back up to the original temperature if they have cooled at all during renneting. If the recipe calls for “cooking” the curds, this is the time to begin slowly raising the temperature in the vat or pot while you are still slowly stirring and cutting any remaining curds that didn't get to the right size already. The temperature should be going up slowly, usually 1-2 F per minute (and sometimes even less).
- If this is a washed curd recipe, at this stage you may need to remove some whey, and add back unchlorinated water at a specific temperature. If it's not the same temperature as the curds and whey, add the water slowly in stages so the curds are changing temperature slowly due to the additional water. Periodically stir the curds to keep them from matting together.
- Stir until ready. When the curds are at their target temperature, you will want to keep stirring periodically to keep them from matting until the curds are “ready”. Readiness depends on the recipe, the desired dryness of the curds, and so on. A few common tests that help determine readiness:
- When a curd is split in half, is the outside seems solidified while the inside is really soft and looks like semi-cooked egg whites? If so, the curd needs more time. The curds should be “cooked through” relatively evenly, having close to the same texture and consistency both inside and toward the outside.
- If you take a handful of curd and squeeze it in your hand, does it mat together well? If you then tease it apart again with your thumb or fingers, do the curds break apart again reasonably well? If not, they may not quite be done yet.
- If you take a handful of curd and press it between the palms of your hand, and then turn it upside down, do the curds stick to the upper hand and not fall off easily? That is a good sign they are ready.
- If you take and handful of curds and squeeze it in a balled-up fist, do the curds squish or squelch out of the sides or between your fingers? If so, they're probably not done yet.
- Are the curds reasonably springy or bouncy? Some cheese makers will toss a curd at the counter to see if it bounces well. (Make your kids do it, they'll have some fun.) Springy curds are a good sign of readiness.
- Pitch the curds (or “whey off”). Remove the whey from the pot or vat down to a level about an inch above the curds, and let the curds sit at the bottom where they will begin to mat. Some recipes call for using cheese mat or a ladle or a hand to slowly move the curds together into one side or a corner and help them begin to mat together in a single mass.
- Form the curds, placing them in your mold/form, usually inside of a cheese cloth inside the form as well. Sometimes this is done under the whey still in the vat to minimize mechanical holes in the cheese, sometimes not. The recipe may call for you to also gently press the curds or place a weight on top of them while they're still in the whey.
- Drain and press the curds. If the curds were still in the whey, remove the form filled with curds to your pressing or draining area to drain. Begin pressing the cheese if that is needed for the style, according to the recipe.
- The cheese usually needs to be kept warm to encourage drainage.
- It is a good idea to start with low weight, if any at all, to keep from closing the cheese rind before about 2 hours have passed. This helps encourage drainage of free and trapped whey.
- Some recipes call for poking the cheese a bit with a knife or skewers to give channels for the whey to escape. When done early in the process, the curds will knit again and the holes will seal up just fine.
- Increase the weight slowly to help keep whey draining, and to start encouraging the curds to fully knit and the surface of the cheese to become smooth. Flip the cheese in the press more frequently at first (15 to 30 minute intervals) and less often after an hour or two (maybe 1-2 hours per flip). If the surface hasn't closed by the two hour mark, begin increasing the weight to help it close.
- Watch the acidity of the cheese. You can taste the whey, and when it start to have a definite acidity you may want to pull it from the press and begin cooling it to slow down the cultures. Recommended is to learn to use a pH meter well, preferably obtain one with a flat probe so you can stick it right against the cheese to get a reading.
- Cool and salt. When the cheese is well-knit, smooth, and has the desired acidity/pH, cool it and then salt it according to the recipe. This will slow the cultures way down and allow the cheese to stabilize, and be ready for aging/affinage.
- Dry the surface. If the cheese is very wet from its salting phase, you will want to let it air-dry for a few hours to a few days. Sometimes this step is done at room temperature to help the cheese grow a layer of yeasts on the surface to prepare it for a washed or other rind, in which case it becomes slightly slippery and smells fruity.
- Age the cheese. This varies based on the cheese, but generally it will need to be in conditions around 50-60 F and 80-95% relative humidity. Turn your cheese every day at first, and after a month turn it at least every few days, and after a few months turn it at least every week until you can't stand it anymore and cut into it to enjoy it.
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.