Homemade Fresh Cheese

• Dairy

  • 1 cups Dairy gold buttermilk
  • 1 gal Milk

• Other

  • Large Heavy Bottom Pot
  • Cheesecloth or Paper towels
  • Food thermometer
  • Sieve

Found on letthebakingbeginblog.com

Ingredients

• 1 gallon of milk
• 1-2 cups Dairy Gold Buttermilk
• Large Heavy Bottom Pot
• Cheesecloth or Paper towels
• Food thermometer
• Sieve

Directions

• *Read complete post before the recipe to get a better understanding of how and why you do what you need to do.
• Pour 1 gallon of milk into a large heavy bottom pot.
• Heat to 100F, or until it’s slightly hotter than warm. (Do not make it hot, or it will kill the buttermilk culture.) Remove from heat.
• Shake the bottle with buttermilk and pour 1-2 cups into the warm milk. Stir for about 1-2 minutes.
• Cover with lid and allow to sit at room temperature, undisturbed for 12-24 hours depending on how warm it is. If room temperature is below 70, place pot of warm milk in the oven with just the light on (NO heat).
• Buttermilk is ready, when it’s thick and you’re able to ‘cut’ it with a spoon, that means when taking a spoonful of buttermilk, it doesn’t run like milk, but holds it’s shape. (When in doubt, leave it for full 24 hours.)
• Cut the buttermilk into 1 inch squares with a long knife.
• Insert a thermometer into one of the curds and start heating over very low heat. It will take about 15 minutes to reach to 120F. This is what it will look like when it’s heated to 130F.
• Make sure the thermometer is inserted into the curd, not the whey. Whey around the curds might even start boiling because it’s of less density than the curds. When temperature inside the curd reaches 100F, give a gentle stir with a large spoon and bring the hot curd from the bottom to the top. It only needs to be heated another 30F-40F degrees before you will need to drain it. You will see both cheese-like chunks and big curd chunks, that’s ok, that’s how it’s supposed to be.
• Once the temperature inside the curd reaches 130-140, give it another gentle stir, to break up large curd chunks and to distribute the heat evenly.
• Carefully pour the heated curds to a different pot lined with a cheese cloth, then gather the ends of the cheesecloth, tie them and hang over the kitchen cabinet door handle or some other device. Allow the whey to drip off, until droplets fall about 30 seconds apart. At this point, transfer the cheese with the cheesecloth to the refrigerator. It will harden up and it will be easier to remove the cheesecloth without ruining the cheese ‘ball’.
• Alternatively, place a sieve over a pot, put 2 layers of paper towel, completely covering the inside area of the sieve. Use a scoop colander (or something similar) to collect curds and shake off the whey, then transfer the collected curds to the paper towel lined sieve. Allow the whey to drip off, until the interval between droplets is 30 seconds or less.