Cheese and Bread Making Day!

So, today was the first attempt at making a hard cheese. I've made mozzarella a few times and it's turned out pretty good. Great texture, but a little under salted each time I've made it.

Hard cheese, though, is a much more involved process and I've been wanting to do it for a while now. Finally went to the homebrew store yesterday and got the last few ingredients I needed. Decided to start with cheddar. I figure I'll choose a different cheese to make every weekend til I've used up the kit.

The farmers market was closed when we made it there yesterday, so I went with store bought milk.

This is what it looked like after all the cultures were added and it was heated. I was nervous that this was going to be screwed up from the start, because I allowed the milk to overheat by 10 degrees...

But the curds cut clean! YAY!

Had to let the curds heat up again, so that they shrink. Then I strained the curds out.

Here, the curds are hanging in cheese cloth to get more of the whey out.

After they hung, I added the cheese salt and broke up the curds a little.

By the way - the cheese is white. In order to get that ORANGE cheddar look, you need to add coloring. Jason doesn't like the look of orange cheese (thinks it looks cheap and fake) so we decided to stick with natural

coloring. Apparently, the type of milk you use will naturally change the color (a grass fed herd will produce a more creamy color than a grain fed herd). This is store bought milk, so it's pretty white.

Then, I packed the curds in the cheesecloth lined cheese mold.

So here is my homemade cheese press with just over 20 lbs of weight on top. It needs to sit like this for 24 hours, then air dry for a week, then cure for at least 8 weeks and as long as 7 months. The longer you age, the stronger the cheese.

There was SO much whey leftover. I tried to make ricotta from it, but I didn't catch much, I

don't think my cheesecloth was fine enough...

I feel bad wasting it all, so I made whey BREAD! YUMM!

4 Loaves! The big round one is a cheese loaf (not homemade cheese...), two of the loaves are garlic and the other is plain.

Needless to say, I'm pooped. 2 lbs of cheese and 4 loaves of bread, plus I got all the christmas decorations down and packed up. Nice to have a productive day!!