Make your own cheese

What fun it would be to make cheese yourself. To get a good idea of how cheese making is done, we will gladly explain it to you. Make sure you have all the ingredients and then it's just a matter of going through all the steps and maybe you can make a delicious cheese yourself! It is important that you work on a good surface. Observe all hygiene rules and take your time to make your own cheese!

What is cheese made of?

A question that is often asked is, how is cheese made? Many people want to make their own cheese and then it is good to know what you need and that is the following:

• 3 litres of milk
• sourdough
• rennet
• 300 ml water with 90 grams of salt

It is important to check which milk you want to use. You can make cheese from goat's or cow's milk. 

How do you make cheese?

Step by step you will get an answer to the question how to make cheese.

• To start with, take three litres of milk and put it in the pan. Then add 5-10 cl of starter. 
• You then slowly heat the milk. Stir occasionally up to 29 degrees Celsius. 
• Then put the milk in a clean bucket and put the bucket away (not in a cold place). 
• Then add 9-12 drops of rennet as you stir the milk.
• Then cover the bucket with a lid or use a cloth and then let it stand for 20-30 minutes. 
• The milk should hardly/not at all cool down. The milk has thickened after half an hour and we now call this curd. 
• You are going to cut the curd. You must take all the time you need and cut quietly. How do you do that?
  • You take a curd cutter, you first go along the edge of the bucket and then in all directions through the milk. 
  • Continue this for up to fifteen minutes, so that the pieces of cheese are about the size of a pea.

Of course, this is far from everything. There are still some steps to be taken to make your cheese as tasty as possible.

• The curd that has been cut sinks to the bottom of the bucket. There is also a part that is wet and we call that 'whey'. 
• You pour off the whey until 2/3 and that remains. Optionally, you can put the whey through the sieve, then no cheese is lost. 
• You then have to heat the whole thing up to 33 degrees Celsius. You first add hot water of 80 degrees Celsius, put this in the bucket. You have to keep stirring as you keep adding the water. 
• You then repeat the cutting process with the curd cutter and afterwards you also pour off the whey to 2/3. 
• Now heat again the cheese to 36 degrees Celsius and then add water of 80 degrees and keep stirring again. When you have reached the final temperature, let the curd stand for ten minutes.
• You will then pour the whey curd through a colander (which is lined with cheesecloth). Then carefully place it in a cheese vessel. You then press the curd, pull the cheesecloth tight, but also smooth and then put it over the cheese. 
• To start with, you put the cheese vessel under a press for ten minutes. After ten minutes you take it out. Then you put the cloth in the vessel and you can put the cheese in there. Then put it under the press again for ten minutes. 
• Later on you take the cheese out of the vessel and put it in a kind of bath with salt. You leave it there for three hours and then you turn it over and leave it there for another three hours.