Don't Stop 'til You Get a Neuf

a.k.a. How I Win at Cheese
I finally got a clean break. The liquid animal rennet made all the difference. Since I'm in a better mood, I explain How Cheese Works.

The Basics
Scientists call milk a complex biological fluid. Here's why. Milk is a solution, basically. The serum (whey) contains protein (caseins), sugar (lactose), and fat (butter). To make cheese, you curdle the milk and drain the whey. In sciencey terms, you precipitate the casiens from the solution.

Proteins consist of long, long chains of amino acids. The amino acid chains get precisely folded into specific shapes to perform a specific job. Imagine a knitted hat: the long thread of yarn has been knitted and purled into a shape that keeps your head warm on chilly days. If you took a pair of scissors and snipped the yarn in a few places, the hat would unravel into a tangled, useless wad of yarn. The tiny scissors we use to snip proteins are called enzymes. This unravels (denatures) the protein in milk (casein) and it clumps together into wads we call curds.  

The Process
First I diluted .25 tsp of calcium chloride in .25 cups of cold water and added that to the milk. Caseins use calcium like glue, so if you need them to clump together into curds, you need calcium. Raw milk and pasteurized milk have the same amount of calcium, however the heat used in pasteurization changes the chemical makeup of the calcium, making it unsticky (insoluble). If your calcium isn't sticky, it won't glue the caseins together. Raw milk proponents argue pasteurization makes calcium more difficult for the human digestive system to absorb (it doesn't stick to your ribs).

I used .25 cups of buttermilk as a starter. Buttermilk is a fermented dairy product. Which sounds gross. Back in the old days, when people had cows, buttermilk was the liquid left over after churning butter. It got its bacterial culture from the milk pail or the butter churn or wherever. These days we pasteurize cow's milk to kill the bacteria then add the bacteria back in to clabber it (Clabbered milk is thick and sour: yogurt and buttermilk are both clabbered milks). Thanks to technology, we can now do with a complex process what we used to do with a simple process.

The bacteria used in cultured buttermilk, Streptococcus lactis, does what all Strep bacteria do: it eats sugar and poops out lactic acid. When used as a starter, the buttermilk bacteria lower the pH of the milk. The simplest definition of acid is any chemical with extra hydrogens that pop off the molecule and float around free as you please. You measure the strength of an acid with pH. pH is an inverse log of hydrogen concentration. All that means is the lower the number, the more hydrogens and the stronger the acid.

Why do we care? Rennet is the enzyme (scissors) that snips the protein (yarn). Hydrogens act like little Energizer batteries that speed up the enzyme. Milk comes in the jug with a pH of 6.7 to 6.5, but rennet works best at a pH of 6.0. I added the buttermilk and brought the milk to room temperature to make the S. lactis happy. Once they were happy, they started eating lactose and pooping out lactic acid, lowering the pH. Then I added the rennet.

After that, it's just a waiting game. I let the pot sit at room temperature for 12 hours before checking the curd.

Here's a quick overview of what just happened:

1. Added calcium and buttermilk to the milk.
2. Brought it up to room temperature.
3. Added the rennet.
4. Let it sit for twelve hours.

The Results
Then I checked for a clean break:

The curd was actually more firm than it looks in the picture. I cut it into cubes and ladled it into some sterilized cheesecloth.

I let it sit for a while to drain the excess whey.

Then hung it in the fridge overnight to drain the rest.

The next day, I folded 2 tsp of salt into the cheese and enjoyed it on a Triscuit.

It tasted vraiment superb. This Neufchatel has the consistency of cream cheese or one of your soft cheeses like Chevre or Skinny Cow or Boursin. William Lawrence (of New York) started marketing cream cheese in the 1870s after messing up a batch of Neufchatel. True Neufchatel (made in Normandy) is aged for over two months so that a soft rind of mold forms on the outside like Brie or Camembert.

What's Next?
The next cheese Dr. Fankhauser has us make is a hard cheese. Like cheddar. But first, I'll have to build my own cheese press. And buy some cheese wax.

http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese_course/Cheese_course.htm