SC - Double cream

[Philip & Susan Troy]

ChannonM at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 8/26/00 6:04:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Raoghnailt
> writes:
> 
> > The one thing I do stress is that you need (if
> >  you don't already have one) is a real dairy (not the rinky-dink one that
> >  came with the Salton yogurt makers) -- not candy -- thermometer.  Mine came
> >  with a kit I bought a long time ago (1983), but the cheesemakers' site
> >  carries one I think.
> >
> I have a brewing thermometer that floats, will that work? Right now my
> problem is finding a supply of unpasteurized milk. I've approached a few
> farms but no luck so far. Even the "I have lots of kittens" story isn't
> flying.
> 
> I'll keep trying.

Unpasteurized, raw, unhomogenized milk is certainly a fine thing to make cheese.

However...

You... do... not... need... unpasteurized... milk... to... make... cheese!

This is a commonly held, but incorrect, belief. Anyone who tells you you
do need unpasteurized milk is either lying or simply wrong.

What you need, or, rather, what is helpful, is unhomogenized milk.
Failing even that, you can buy, for some small sum, from the same place
you're probably getting rennet from, unless you're slaughtering your own
calves and processing the wealcrud, a calcium chloride solution which
you can add to ordinary milk from the supermarket. This will improve the
curdling abilities of homogenized milk so that cheese-making is
possible, while adding a proportionately miniscule amount of a chemical
that drains off in the whey anyway.

I can certainly understand the desire to learn everything possible about
the overall process from period beginning to period end, but to forego
making cheese because you can't get raw milk straight from the udder is,
if I may coin an original phrase nobody here has _ever_ heard before,
letting the best be the enemy of the good.

Adamantius  
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com