[Sca-cooks] Goat Cheese (Warning: Long)

[Rikke D. Giles]

On 06/03/2010 10:16:37 PM, Linda Larson wrote:
> I own dairy goats, and have made cheese for the past few years.  

For raw milk, my advice is keep everything as clean as possible, but 
don't go overboard.  For thousands of years people made cheese with raw 
milk and their clean hands.  Sometimes we forget that in this 'food is 
poison, oh my god!' anxious world of ours.

Try capturing good cultures from other cheeses that were storebought, 
or that you made and really like.  Basically take some of the cheese, 
mash it up with milk and let it sit out for a day or two, then 
refrigerate and use quickly.  At least, that's my recipe.  You can also 
use whey from a cheese that you really like.  In fact, this is one old 
fashioned way to keep the culture going through years of cheesemaking.

My experience is I have to be very careful with the ripening and aging 
process with my raw milk cheeses.  This is because my goat's milk is 
naturally spiked with 'blue'.  So if I'm not careful, everything 
becomes a roquefort or stilton.  This is not a bad thing!  But I do 
like making other kinds of cheese.  With raw goat milk, you can make a 
superior parmesan, romano, jack and pepper jack, manchego, chevre, whey 
cheese and more.  And the blue varieties I've made are to die for.  My 
most recent is a 'Camemblue'.  Yum!  I haven't had good luck making raw 
milk goat cheddar or swiss.  However, I think that's because my taste 
buds are tilted towards Tillamook cheddar and I haven't been able to 
train them otherwise.

Period sources:  I am just starting to collect these.  There's Markham, 
and this weekend I'm making Digby's scalded curd cheese.  I have 
translated a letter from Jacob Bifrons about cheesemaking in the Alps 
duaring the 1500's.  That's in the Florilegium.  I'm working on 
translating Pantaleone (a late 1400's source on milk and cheese).  
Pliny and other Roman writers talk some about cheese and milk.  There's 
much more, but like I said, I'm just starting on it.

YS,
Aelianora de Wyntringham