First rennet cheese

With labneh, and quark conquered I decided it was time to slowly move toward real cheese. Not one of those huge wheels in red wax that are sometimes on display in the stores of course, at least not yet :-) Rather, I would make a simple soft cheese, very similar in consistence to the labneh and quark I had done earlier. After all, you got to start small and work yourself up.

It turned out I had the necessary equipment and ingredients already, though one of the ingredients required a little preparation. Because, for real cheese the milk is not curdled by bacteria as in yogurt or buttermilk. Rather, it uses "rennet", which is an enzyme, and which is not easy to find in regular grocery stores. It is readily available online though, and some home brew stores carry it conveniently as well. I have also been told that many of the ethnic stores have it as well, but had no necessity to verify that. Rennet should cost about $7 for ten tablets, and each tablet will curdle up to five gallons of milk.

So here are is the recipe I following making my first rennet cheese:

• Equipment:
  A pot with lid, big enough to hold a gallon of milk. I just used the bowl of my slow cooker
  A big knife; its blade has to be long enough to cut through the milk all the way through the bottom of the pot once it has curdled.
  A flour sack; available at department stores for about a buck a piece.
  A bowl to collect the whey when it drains out of the set curd.
  A ladle to spoon the curd from the pot into the flour sack.
  Fridge space to suspend the flour sack with the curd in it for draining. The dripping bowl has to fit under it.
  
• Ingredients:
  Milk, one gallon,
  Homemade buttermilk, 1/4 cup, I read yogurt works as well,
  Rennet, 1/4 tablet,
  Salt, 2 teaspoons should do (though I used 3).
  
• Get the gallon of milk to room temperature, by letting it sit on the counter or by warming it with warm water in the sink. We are shooting for 65°F though in my case I wound up closer to 70.
  
• Put the milk into the pot and add the buttermilk. Stir. Let sit for about two hours. The goal is not for the buttermilk to turn the milk but to achieve some slight acidity. The rennet needs that acidity to do its thing.
  
• Dissolve the quarter tablet of rennet (I broke up the tablet with a big knife) in 1/4 cup of water. The mixture may look cloudy but not undissolved pieces of the tablet should be left.
  
• Add the rennet solution to the pot . Stir again. Now put the lid on, move the pot out of the way, out of the light but still at room temperature (nominally,  65°F, my place was warmer) and forget about it for the next 12 hours. It must not be disturbed.
  
• After 12 hours the milk should have set into a soft curd. If it hasn't let it sit another 12 hours. Even if it has set you can still let it sit for extra time. That was the case with me, I had to go to work.
  
• Once the milk really has set into a curd, cut it with the big knife, from top to bottom, cuts about 1/2 wide. When done do it again, at a 90° angle.
  
• Line the dripping bowl with the flour sack and ladle the cut curd into the bowl. In the end, just pour the leftover whey and little curd pieces remaining in the pot over the curds in the flour sack.
  
• Suspend the flour sack in the fridge so it drains its whey into the bowl placed blow the flour sack. The first couple of hours it will drain rather rapidly and it may be necessary to get rid of some of the collected whey.
  
• After 24 hours of draining the cheese is ready. Remove bowl and flour sack from the fridge. Preserve or dump the whey, then empty the flour sack into the bowl.
  
• Add the salt. The recommended amount is one or two teaspoons. I used three. While I still made great cheese I now recommend one or two teaspoons as well.
  
• Work the salt into the cheese. I just used my hands. It worked but the cheese proved rather clingy. I will probably try a hand mixer the next time.
  
• The cheese is ready. Transfer into a storage container (my cheese just filled a quart size Ziploc container), keep in the fridge.

And that is it. The final product will be about a quart of something that very much resembles cream cheese. I got a quart container of it, for ingredient costs of about $3.30. It tastes great! A tad salty maybe (due to my own fault) but still better than cream cheese I would buy from the store. So, while this was a labor of love it was a great deal as well. Something I might even keep doing- except- my eyes are still set on those big red waxed wheels of cheese I sometimes see at the store...