YaY for Cheese…

Look! This is cheese.
This is cheese, made by ME!
Yummy cheese. Camembert cheese.
Organic Cheese. Mmmm.
This cheese will be ready in 3 weeks.

I am back. With cheese. Yum.
Saturday morning I left here at 8.00 am, and drove the 100 ks or so to Woodbridge high School. I had a really good run and made it there about 9.40. Excellent, the class started at 10.00. I am really anal about punctuality, and I hate being late.

Tanni was there already, Yay. We hadn’t seen each other for ages. Phone conversations just aren’t the same as actually seeing your bestest friend. Let alone spending all day making cheese together.

We had been given a list of things to bring to the course. Apron, Tea towels, Cake racks, pen and paper… and the trickiest thing of all a plastic underbed storer. The description of this underbed storer was ambiguous at best. Tanni and I agonised over which storer to get. Between us we haunted chickenfeed (a local discount chainstore) Tanni doing Huonville , Kingston Sandy Bay and Moonah. whilst i kept a beady eye on theBridgewater, Glenorchy, New Norfolk and Rosny stores. It was VERY HARD trying to find the plastic storer we thought we needed. But we perservered .hahaha. We had covered all of southern Tassie in our diligence.. and finally decided that Tanni would buy two of the smaller containers. I would buy two of the larger containers. We Would Be Prepared …

When we were checking out, Sneakily of course, what the other course doers had brought along as their underbed storer option, Tanni and I still dithered. did we use the smaller one or the larger one. Decisions like this are important. *sigh* We decided to take in one of each. of course. Sometimes the simplest of decisions need a lot of indecision initially you know. *hehe*

Can you imagine if we were doing a rocket science course? mmm titanium or plutonium mmm magnesium or hydrogen.. gosh the moon would still be untrodden upon.?.

I seriously recommend doing an Adult education course with a friend. We were having a great time and we hadn’t even made it into the classroom yet.

The tutor was NickHaddow from the Bruny Island Cheese Co.

cheesemaking is really simple. Yay for simple. But really intense* sighs* at intense.

Here it is in a nutshell.

1. Place 10 litres of milk in stock pot with heavy base.
2. Heat treat milk
3.cool milk to 34 degrees celcius
4.add starter culture
5.allow to ripen for 60 minutes.. (ha this sounds simple doesn’t it. ha haha ) this means gently stir the milk for 60 minutes making sure the temperture stays at 34 Degrees celcius..

6.add rennet
7.allow the milk to coagulate undisturbed for approx 45 mins.
(yay this means leave the milk alone and go to the loo, or have some lunch, or sit down etc)
8. cut the curd into 2cm cubes
9.allow the curd to heal for 5-10 mins (means dont fiddle with the curd..lol)
10.turn the curd gently
11. gently stir the curd every 10 mins. for 30 minutes.
12 . allow the curd to settle and remove as much whey as possible. ( save the whey)
13.ladle the curd into hoops.( little mold things)
14 turn the cheese 4 times in the next few hours ( this was tricky )
15. allow to drain overnight.. (in the underbed storer thingys yay)
16.put the cheeses into a brine for 30-40 minutes.
17.place on a rack to drain for 24 hours in the container.
18.turn the cheese every day
19.day 7-10 a nice mould /rind should have formed
20.Wrap the cheese in cheese paper and allow to mature. approx 3-4 weeks.

the dot points above were copied from the sheet we were given, the cheesemaking process was a bit different, not much tho.

I am getting” get off the computer “looks from my hubby, so If anyone has any questions leave them in the comments and I will answer them .. cheers…